Es'hail 2 / QO-100
Up front - I'm envious of my fellow techie Amateur Radio Operators in Europe, Africa, and Eastern Brazil because they have access to Amateur Radio transponders onboard the Es'hail 2 satellite in geosynchronous orbit directly above Africa. Those transponders are referred to as Qatar OSCAR 100 - the 100th "satellite" that made it to operational status and was formally declared to be an Obiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio (OSCAR). Because the payload was sponsored by Qatar, it gets to add a prefix to OSCAR-100 - QO-100. See the excellent AMSAT-UK article Es'hail 2 / QO-100 for more details.
Update 2021-04-22: One minor nitpick - QO-100 is often referred to as a satellite. It's not. QO-100 is a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite. That's an important distinction - Amateur Radio does not have a dedicated satellite in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO). Nor, do I think it could; those orbit slots are simply too valuable. For a satellite to operate at a GEO slot must be highly capable and function for years, even decades, including among many other things, sufficient station-keeping fuel to correct its orbit to stay stationary as viewed from Earth. The reality is that Amateur Radio simply isn't in that league.
I'm envious because those techie Amateur Radio Operators are having fun experimenting with homebrewing satellite uplinks to work QO-100, despite being spread over three continents. They have a common "watering hole"* to gather at in geosynchronous orbit. With a geosynchronous satellite, the barriers to entry are much lower because experimenters can spend their time and energy working on the radio systems rather than tracking systems. The more common low earth orbit Amateur Radio satellites have limited availability and are constantly moving across the sky, requiring active antenna tracking systems.
Update 2021-04-27 - A friend alerted me that there is an interesting article on what it's like to operate QO-100 from Europe. It was written by Bill Dzurilla NZ5N and published in the May/June 2021 issue of ARRL QEX. If you're an ARRL member, you can access it here. If you're not an ARRL member, you can't see QEX or any other ARRL publication. (Growing Amateur Radio, indeed. Paywalls are just the thing to get people interested in Amateur Radio.) At the moment I am an ARRL member and I was able to read the article, and operating QO-100 looks like just as much fun as I imagined it would be. In the article there's mention of an interesting hybrid mode - build up your station as transmit-only, and receive via one of several Internet-connected receivers (generically called Web Software Defined Receivers - WebSDRs) such as the one operated by the British Amateur Television Club (BATC). I suppose that's almost the next best thing to being in the footprint of QO-100.
Amateur Radio Geostationary Satellite Project
The Western hemisphere almost had an equivalent to QO-100 - a project begun (I think) in 2015, and discussed in 2016 by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) called Amateur Radio Geostationary Satellite (ARGS) / Phase 4B. The video presentation about it at the 2016 Digital Communications Conference was exciting! It was an exciting concept and would have been more sophisticated and more capable than QO-100. Unfortunately, the ARGS project / Phase 4B quietly faded away, with no conclusive explanation about what happened to it (that I can find online).
Update 2021-04-27 - A friend sent me an article which mentioned this page - AMASAT Project Status Overview where something of an answer was offered:
AMSAT / Virginia Tech Geostationary Satellite Project (Phase 4B) Status
Virginia Tech continues to investigate opportunities to fly an amateur payload aboard a geostationary or geosynchronous satellite. A Payload Accommodation Study showed that an amateur payload could be carried on a U. S. Government satellite, but that satellite has been delayed indefinitely. While Virginia Tech was offered a spot on a government satellite, the cost, duration of mission, and lack of guarantees that the payload would be activated resulted in that spot being declined. Discussions continue.
...
To be fair, it was made clear at every presentation that the project was speculative, and depended on the "never quite committed" launch of an experimental satellite.
Sadly, from my reading, there is no current, feasible possibility of an Amateur Radio payload in geosynchronous orbit above the Western hemisphere. The requirements of Amateur Radio are such that a geosynchronous satellite payload would have to be specifically engineered for Amateur Radio usage, including antennas, because the frequencies that Amateur Radio can use for satellite communications are very different than commonly used for geosynchronous satellites. The cost of such a unique payload (I'm told) runs to the hundreds of millions of dollars. (The ARGS / Phase 4B project would have been much less expensive because its satellite host was to be a research satellite rather than a "production" satellite.) Even though Amateur Radio, especially US Amateur Radio, now has a venture fund of sorts, a dedicated Amateur Radio payload for a geosynchronous satellite is beyond its capabilities.
ORI's Phase 4 Ground Station and Phase 4 Space
There was some activity that came out of the ARGS project. Open Research Institute (ORI) was founded, in part, to develop an open source Ground Station reference design - Phase 4 Ground Station. ORI decided to work on a satellite payload - Phase 4 Space. From my reading, there is no "ready to go" satellite payload available from ORI that could be placed on a satellite opportunity. They're working on it, but amateur labor comes with an amateur labor timeline.
Experimentation on Commercial Geosynchronous Satellites is Limited
I remember reading an editorial (Never Say Die) by Wayne Green, W2NSD/1, editor of the late, great 73 Magazine proposing the idea of "Amateur Radio" collectively ponying up the cost to rent a transponder on a geosynchronous satellite. (I wish I could find the reference to quote Wayne definitively.) It sounds fun, but in the end it's not that feasible to buy (time on) an existing transponder on an existing geosynchronous satellite above the Western hemisphere for Amateur Radio experimentation. No satellite operator wants "amateur experimenters" inexpertly transmitting at their precious geosynchronous satellites. Operating a geosynchronous satellite is expensive (there are only so many orbital slots in the Western hemisphere - precious real estate). Every geosynchronous satellite is a careful balancing act of juggling multiple antennas (spot beams) and multiple transmitters and receivers. That's why anything that transmits to a geosynchronous satellite must be installed by a "professional" and there are protections in place to turn off the transmitter remotely to only transmit if authorization is received from the particular transponder to be used. Even if we did do so... to what end? If we want "turnkey" communications amongst ourselves, unlike in Wayne's day, we now have the Internet.
That said, there is some experimentation going on with receiving data from commercial geosynchronous satellites. One such project is Othernet (formerly, Outernet). Othernet doesn't really involve Amateur Radio, but it is some experimentation with receiving data from geosynchronous satellites - datacasting. There is a stream of data originating on a satellite transponder that Othernet has bought time on. Othernet has developed their own receiver hardware, and has published enough of the details of its data format to allow receiption with other Software Defined Receivers.
- There would be a (nominal) sponsor organization to provide a clear, direct line of communication between US military and the participants.
- There would be a formal plan similar to an Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Special Temporary Authority (STA) authorization such as the STA that permitted experimentation with Spread Spectrum in Amateur Radio spectrum in the 1990s. Among other things, such a plan would document the participants, their participant's equipment, and issue regular status reports.
- The only participants would be licensed US Amateur Radio Operators.
- The participants must agree to a code of conduct, including non-commercial use, non-interference to USG communications.
- The participants must participate in an "out of band" communication system (such as an Internet email distribution list) that could quickly notify them of any change in status of their use of FLTSATCOM.
- Each participatant would be required to maintain logs of operation (perhaps online).
- Each participant must participate in regular drills to prove efficacy.
- Each participant must report their use of their station hardware.
- Each participatnt must insure that their station hardware operates optimally (no spattering from poorly designed or built transmitters, etc.).
Some benefits that I can imagine:
- Significantly reduce or eliminate the problem of "Brazilian pirate users".
- Develop "best practices" for an eventual Western hemisphere geosynchronous satellite with a wideband transponder such as FLTSATCOM.
- Generate additional excitement for Amateur Radio and especially Amateur Radio satellite activities (and space activities in general).
- Experiment with data modes for a geosynchronous satellite. For example, a datacasting mode such as Othernet (mentioned above) or even an evolution of RadioMirror.
* The Watering Hole Concept is an article I have yet to write.
Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-04-03