AMSAT President's Letter

As I prepare for the series of AMSAT meetings that will take place in Pittsburgh this week, I have been reviewing the accomplishments of the past year and the challenges of the coming year. I am pleased with the progress of AMSAT's organizational and infrastructure improvements and with the
progress of the two satellite projects, P3E and Eagle.

For the coming year I am committed to focus AMSAT's activities primarily on the completion and launch of P3E, the construction of the Eagle space frame and implementation of the Eagle Software Defined Transponders (SDX), at a minimum.

The changes in AMSAT's organizational structure have created many new opportunities for members to actively contribute to the growth and advancement of our organization. Our members are working on teams that are
dedicated to areas of excellence such as finance and fundraising, marketing and field operations, technical and scientific, office management, external affairs, operations, human spaceflight, and record keeping. We have a great
group of volunteers working in these areas and there is always room for more people.

Our infrastructure has improved in a number of ways, most notably the rollout and constant upgrade of AMSAT's new Web site and on-line store and the overhaul of our accounting practices. Other improvements are in process
and will be brought on line as time permits such as the AMSAT Information Management System (AIMS) and member only services.

The P3E project is a very exciting one that holds great promise for the return of AMSAT to the benefits of high earth orbit satellites. This project is being led by AMSAT-DL, as have all the HEO satellite projects. AMSAT in North America is contributing substantial manpower and funding to
P3E and is committed to the success of the project and to our close relationship with our good friends and colleagues in AMSAT-DL. I am personally a member of AMSAT, AMSAT-DL and AMSAT-UK.

The Eagle project is maturing to the point that we will soon be ready to build the space frame and start assembling some of the payload modules like the Internal Housekeeping Unit and the U/V and L/S software defined transponders. Nearly all of the work that we are doing in support of P3E will also be used in Eagle so we will maximize the benefits of having cooperated on P3E.

As with any new satellite design, there are design issues and uncertainties. Let there be no mistake that these are normal and healthy parts of the design process as we balance the science, engineering, technology and mission requirements for Eagle. The Eagle team is large, diverse and excited about what they are doing. New qualified volunteers are being added to the team on a regular basis. Status reports are appearing in every issue of the AMSAT Journal.

This coming year will be one of improved communication. There will be an effort to expand our communications beyond the official outlets, the Journal and AMSAT News Service. You will see more reports on the AMSAT-BB message board and we will improve the content and timeliness of the information on the AMSAT Web site, especially on the Eagle pages.

The annual membership meeting will be held Friday evening, October 7th, at 8:00pm Eastern Time and is open to the membership. This meeting will be recorded and both audio and video will be placed on AMSAT servers soon after the meeting. The meeting will also be broadcast on the AMSAT EchoLink conference. If you have questions and cannot be there please submit them by e-mail (details to be announced on ANS). We may also be able to take questions from EchoLink's text messaging window, if we can get someone in the meeting to operate the computer.

AMSAT is an exciting and vibrant organization with a great deal to offer our members. No organization is perfect but we have a fabulous Mission and Vision and we are performing to those promises. I encourage those who need more information or clarification to gain a better understanding of what we are doing and why it is important and exciting, to contact me or any of the other Board members and Officers.

Contact information is on the AMSAT Web site at http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/AboutAmsat/officers.php.

Rick

W2GPS

AMSAT President

Email: w2gps <at> cnssys.com

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