[DSP-10] EME2 talk well received at SF AMSAT Symposium

[Courtney Duncan]

I took my DSP-10 EME2 story to the AMSAT Symposium in Foster City 
(San Francisco), October 6 - 8, 2006.  It was good to see some of the 
old guys.  I haven't been to an official AMSAT function since 1990.

Of course, my talk wasn't about amateur satellites, unless you count 
OSCAR-0 (the moon) but it was well placed, between a discussion of 
electronically steered phased arrays for Eagle (the next AMSAT 
high-earth-orbit project) by Tom Clark, and some talks about Software 
Defined Transponders for future satellites by various team members.

It was well received, however.  One of the focuses of AMSAT is to 
bring their world down to smaller and less expensive ground stations. 
Single antenna EME from a barefoot DSP-10/Brickette is one sort of 
step in that direction.  (DSP-10 itself isn't that cheap, but the 
software defined technology is certainly heading in that direction.)

I'm making several simultaneous appeals.  The big one is to get 
people to use their imaginations about what can be done on this new 
frontier of radio, both the technology (SDR) and the horizons (the 
next 20-30 dB into the noise floor).  I'd like to see institutions 
such as AMSAT come up with awards programs that would encourage and 
reward experimentation.  Heck, nobody would spend half a million 
dollars to send a troupe to Peter Island unless an awards program 
named DXCC existed and was well established, no?  I'd also like to 
see them think of SDRs as automatable devices for such complex but 
mundane tasks as satellite tracking and ephemerides production, etc. 
Those are things you really can't do with an IC-910, or "Shack On 
Belt".

The Q & A afterwards was quite lively.  Nobody challenged my QRPpp 
EME claim, rather it was anecdotes and ideas about how to move 
forward.  Tom Clark (K3IO, former W3IWI) reminisced about the time he 
hooked his HT up to the feed of an 85 foot dish at the DSN and did 
EME.  Then he hooked a TNC up to it and bounced packets.  Phil Karne, 
KA9Q, asked about bi-static.  That is, why don't we listen for 
returns from big, non-amateur transmitters?  People do that.  There 
are websites and talks at other conferences about this work.  Fine 
with me.

Afterwards, Bill Tynan, W3XO/5 invited me to bring the talk to the 
Central States VHF meeting in San Antonio next July.  He thought W5UN 
might well be interested in such things, once he gets his new 160 
meter array going.  I just might, particularly if I make more 
progress and something additional to say.

Courtney, n5bf/6