Welcome: Richard M. Hambly, W2GPS President

摘要

It is great to be back after missing the Symposium last year due to the effects ofHurricane Katrina.This year we are fortunate to be the guests of Project Oscar Inc. that was fonned in 1959 and isresponsible for building and launching the fIrst four OSCAR satellites.This past year has been fIlled with exciting developments. The AO-51 satellite has perfonnedsuperbly, giving many Hams their frrst opportunity to operate a satellite and others their fIrstopportunity to try new modes and bands. The development of the P3E satellite in Gennany and theEagle satellites have taken some interesting turns, especially with the inclusion ofsoftware defmedtransponders (SDXs) as superior performing replacements for the old familiar analog transponderimplementations. A demonstration of this new transponder technology at Dayton impressed all whotried it.