Ham / Prepper Sat Comms

[Silent Earth]

Dunno if you chaps have seen this article on amateur satellite comms?. I'm not into it like you guys but I do recognise a possible big step in improving comms over longer distances that DONT have the dreadful vulnerability of ground based repeaters / relays / parrots etc. A cloud of satellites instead of repeaters could be that step forward we would need to have secure long ranges comms if their is a big event on earth that sees the relays and repeaters fail.

 

[CommoFreq]

Who's going to be paying for all of this? At $10million per flight with 3 satellites on board, to get 900 of them up there, you're looking at a $3billion price tag. And that's just for the ride. Nevermind the satellites themselves, the ground stations, etc. Someone is going to have to pay for this.

I'm thinking it will be service-based contracts. Don't pay your bill, lose your comms. For peacetime, this would be wonderful. For SHTF situations, HF is still the king.

 

[Maverick]

I have used satellite internet (in it's current form) and it sucks! With that many satellites the ground support from signal to end users homes would be astronomical? For communications it's fine in peace time but like GPS I'm sure someone is going to have control of the master switch in times of a crises! I agree with CommoFreq, HF is the rule for long distant communications in a SHTF situation or even peace time for that matter. The one thing lacking in the preppers world are the folks that operate down in 10m range of the spectrum utilizing CW/RTTY so put on that Boy Scout hat and learn International Morse!

 

[CommoFreq]

Either that, or take a swim into the digital world, and let your computer do the morse code for you.

I know, I know. I'm a lazy ***. There's no substitute for knowledge. I could never force myself to do CW though.