Red River Radio Amateurs

When the AMSAT-OSCAR 7 (AO-7) amateur radio satellite was launched in 1974, its expected lifespan was about five years. The plucky little satellite made it to 1981 when a battery failure caused it to be written off as dead. Then, in 2002 it came back to life. The prevailing theory being that one of the cells in the satellites NiCd battery pack, in an extremely rare event, failed open — thus allowing the satellite to run (intermittently) off its solar panels.

When I got my amateur radio Technician license in March 2019, most of my family were not licensed, the exceptions being my mom, who had held her Technician class license since her middle school years, and my grandfather, who had an Advanced license. However, neither of them was very active, aside from the occasional listen in on an 80-meter net here and there by my grandfather.

Despite their lack of activity, the fact that some in my family knew what amateur radio was gave me an advantage in the radio community right off the bat. They were willing to take me to local club meetings, Field Day setups, and countless other events that some parents might have taken one look at and turned away from. In fact, one of these outings, and a particularly significant one at that, provided some of the biggest reasons that I stayed involved with amateur radio.

Jeff and Joe Geerling provide a quick but insightful overview of the FCC’s DELETE, DELETE, DELETE docket, offering their thoughts on its implications—especially from Joe’s perspective as a broadcast engineer. Their discussion is a great starting point for understanding how these regulatory changes could impact radio and wireless communications.

In this video Bill shares with us about what the proposed FCC Deregulation really means for the radio amateur, and what we need to be watchful of.

There are lots of stories going around about this FCC Deregulation document. Here are my thoughts on this subject—I will be following this story to see where it goes.