Re: [amsat-bb] Re: Open questions for the Board of Directors candidates

[Nate Duehr <nate@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The question that has always made me wonder the most about all the "big" 
organizations in Ham Radio:

Who ARE all you people that have time off to fly regularly to all these 
AMSAT/ARRL/Whatever National meetings, do all this work, and pay for the 
trip?  You all independently wealthy or what?  :-)

Hah...

I am VERY happy there are people out there that both have the time and 
resources to do these jobs, but it's always been a wonderment to me when 
I see engineers who have access to international travel to go work on 
birds, enough time off from work to allow them to go, and enough money 
to actually do it.

:-)

I have a "normal" engineering/technical support job at a fairly "normal" 
U.S. company and can barely keep up with running a repeater club locally!

My two-to-three weeks off a year is probably the highest limiting 
factor, and that'll get better over the course of DECADES, but I'm sure 
jealous of European and Australian engineers I talk with who have two 
MONTHS of time off per year, paid.  Or more.  Must be nice.

That type of time off is so far out of most U.S. engineering job 
realities, I just shake my head and say, "Boy, I wish!"  Understandably, 
some tech companies might allow an engineer some un-paid time to go work 
on something if it were job-related... but I can't believe that's the 
majority of folks who work on BoD's, engineering groups, and what-not, 
of our largest world-wide or nationwide Amateur Radio organizations.

I don't know of any friends my age (mid 30's) who have similar technical 
jobs who would ever have the time, resources, or inclination to "spend" 
them on something like AMSAT.  Some of them certainly have the talent 
and skills, but no way they'd ever choose to toast one of their two 
weeks off a year on it.  (Not saying they wouldn't want to do it if they 
had more time/resources, but no way would any of them be able to do it 
at our current stage of life.)

There are weeks (like this one) where it's so hard for me to schedule 
two to three people to show up to work on a simple FM repeater site with 
all the appropriate test gear, replacement parts, and assorted "stuff", 
that I'm always amazed AMSAT can even launch anything...

Nice work to those of you doing it - now if I could just figure out HOW 
you're doing it... (GRIN).  Keep up the good work!  Glad someone can do it!

I'm guessing a lot of the volunteers will answer with one simple 
response: "Self-employed".

Nate WY0X
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