[Ground-station] Paid personnel as operators or license grantees of Amateur Satellites
Zach Leffke
zleffke at vt.edu
Wed Apr 11 07:48:57 PDT 2018
I apologize in advance for the length of this email. Also, I apreciate
those that take the time to read it and would greatly appreciate
feedback on my proposed scenario and the opinions of those on the list
concerning it.
This is a topic I'm acutely interested in as I am a member of research
faculty at Virginia Tech and run our (mostly Amateur Radio) satellite
ground station. For the record, so far everything we've been up to is
receive only operations. Additionally, the current cubesats underway at
VT all have Experimental licensing (despite my vigorous, though failed,
attempts to convince the powers that be to go the Amateur route). But
for the rest of this email, lets ignore that fact, and assume that we
were doing things under the Amateur Satellite Service.
Also, one of my personal goals is to somehow, someday prove to the
University cubesat community that the concept of 'Amateur vs Scientific'
doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, and that University built
cubesats can be Amateur Radio related, provide a service to Hams,
educate students, /and/ conduct science that a non-ham PI might care
about. I believe this is in keeping with the spirit of Amateur Radio
and pushing the limits of science through experimentation (granted there
are very specific details to pay attention to with this, like how the
experimentation should advance the state of the art of radio.....not
just collect a bunch of science data about the sun or whatever).
Since I was an undergrad (summer 2011), doing a summer internship (first
time I got paid for research!) related to the prototype of our current
system (again RX only at the time), I've been concerned about this. Let
me pose a specific, though currently hypothetical scenario, and I would
love the opinions of those on the list concerning this.
One of the exceptions Paul mentioned is an educational exemption. Here
is the legalese excerpt from 47 CFR Part 97 (hint search for the term
'educational', there is only 1 instance of this in the document, some
emphasis added, but the words are verbatim):
§97.113 Prohibited transmissions.
(3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has
a *pecuniary interest*, including communications on behalf of an
employer, with the following exceptions:
(iii) A control operator may accept compensation as an incident of a
teaching position during periods of time when an amateur station is used
by that teacher as a part of classroom instruction at an educational
institution.
OK, so that's the specific legalese concerning 'educational
exemptions.' We currently have a cubesat mission we are calling the
Virginia Cubesat Constellation (VCC). Three 1Us, each built by a VA
University (VT, UVA, ODU). The mission is funded through an
Undergraduate STEM initiative from NASA (so technically, federally
owned). The number 1 stated goal of the mission (literally the purpose
of the existence of the project) is to get students 'hands on education
in the design, construction, and operation of spacecraft.' Operation of
the cubesat involves radio communication. These satellites are
currently getting licensed under the Experimental service, and will
operate outside of the Amateur Satellite Service (401 MHz satellite
band). However, originally, they were planning for 435 MHz band, and
they were planning a crosslink to measure pseudorange between the three
birds. Befoe the change, I was pushing heavily for Amateur licensing,
and for the team to open up use of the crosslink on weekends for
'multi-hop' comms to the Amateur Community. So for the proposed
scenario, lets say they had gone this route and the satellites were
licensed in the Amateur Satellite Service.
Almost done.....a few remaining items for the proposed scenario.
1. Most of the students involved in the institutions are receiving
class credit for their involvement in the project (some getting 'Senior
Design Project' credit, some getting undergraduate research credit, some
getting credit in the courses that rolled this project into their lab
requirements, etc.).
2. It is my goal to one day train up a corps of (amateur licensed)
student operators that run the day to day operations of the VTGS, that I
would oversee. Communications would be under the Amateur Radio Service,
hopefully using a 'Space Communications Club' callsign that I would be
the trustee of (so ultimately, I bear the responsibility, with my
license on the line).
3. I am not a member of teaching faculty. However, I consider all of
my work with students as a form of teaching ('hands on, minds on'
principles of VT education), though I tend to think of it more as
training (harkens back to my USMC days, its like training junior Marines
on how to operate a SatCom terminal and practical engineering principles
behind ground station design and implementation).
So in my opinion, my compensation would be incidental to a teaching
position (#3), during periods of time (during on orbit operation, each
pass) when an Amateur Station (#2, the club station, aka the VTGS) is
used by that teacher (or students under the club call, so ultimately
me), as part of classroom education (#1, the students are receiving
course credit).
To me that all seems to be a legitimate use of the Amateur Radio
Service. My compensation for operation of the station meets the
exemption criteria in my opinion. More to the point, I'm not in this
game for the money, the money is incidental. I'm in this game to teach
people about SatCom, Space, Amateur Radio, etc. All things that align
directly with VT principles (Ut Prosim!) and the Charter of the Hume
Center and 'preparing the next generation of National Security
leaders....' (space communications are a key part of our National
Security, and using Amateur Radio to teach the fundamentals just seems
to make sense to me).
On a larger scale, many organizations seem to be aligned in their goals,
but the 'legalese' seems to get in the way. NASA has STEM goals,
Amateur Radio is highly STEM oriented, ONR, AFRL, ARO, etc. all have
STEM Goals, NSF has STEM goals, AMSAT has the words 'education' in their
Charter, ARISS is educationally aligned.
It seems silly to me that I would be considered to be 'breaking the law'
if I ran an ARISS contact (involving AMSAT, NASA, VT, etc.) using the
VTGS, during working hours (I'm salary, so time of day doesn't really
matter).
If someone can point out to me any fallacies in my logic, I would be
very appreciative.
Very Sincerely and Respectfully,
Zach, KJ4QLP
Research Associate
Aerospace Systems Lab
Ted & Karyn Hume Center for National Security & Technology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Work Phone: 540-231-4174
Cell Phone: 540-808-6305
On 4/11/2018 1:45 AM, Bruce Perens via Ground-Station wrote:
> I asked ARRL what their position was, through my director a few days
> ago. So far, they don't see a need to change the rules.
>
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 10:41 PM Paul Williamson <paul at mustbeart.com
> <mailto:paul at mustbeart.com>> wrote:
>
> This summary fails to mention that there is a list of four
> exceptions to the pecuniary interest rule in Part 97.113(3). This
> suggests that the FCC could grant a further exception for
> satellite operators if it saw fit to do so, without running afoul
> of the ITU.
>
> One of those exceptions was added in Docket 92-136, which also
> relaxed the rule prohibiting any "business" communication. My
> point is simply that rules can be changed, even rules we've come
> to view as immutable.
>
> -Paul
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 5:22 PM, Bruce Perens via Ground-Station
> <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute
> <mailto:ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute>> wrote:
>
>
> Paid Ground-Station Control Operators and Amateur Sattelites
>
> Paid personnel are not allowed to be control operator or
> license grantee of Amateur Satellites. In the United States,
> this means that a paid employee of the sponsoring organization
> of the satellite, for example a professor at the university
> that has built the satellite, can not be a control operator or
> the license grantee.
>
> I recently corresponded with our IARU Divison 2
> representatives regarding this issue. Thanks to Edson W. R.
> Pereira PY2SDR and Ray Soifer W2RS for this information:
>
> The issue regarding paid operators is due to the definition of
> the amateur radio service as defined by the ITU.
>
> ARTICLE 1 Terms and definitions
>
> * No. 1.56 amateur service: A radiocommunication service for
> the purpose of self-training, intercommunication and
> technical investigations carried out by amateurs, that is,
> by duly authorized persons interested in radio technique
> solely with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest.
> * No. 1.57 amateur-satellite service: A radiocommunication
> service using space stations on earth satellites for the
> same purposes as those of the amateur service.
> * No. 1.96 amateur station: A station in the amateur service.
>
> The same definition is used by the FCC:
> https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/amateur-radio-service
>
> The key point here is the term “pecuniary interest” — in
> otther words, “without financial compensation”. The definition
> is related to the *operation* of an amateur radio station, as
> you have stated in your message. Persons, including amateur
> radio operators, could be financially compensated to design
> and build amateur satellites, but according to the
> regulations, as they are presently written, the person cannot
> be compensated to operate the station.
>
> If the station will operate under a US FCC amateur license,
> the control operator may not be an employee of the sponsoring
> organization, whether or not he is being directly compensated
> for operating the station. The license grantee is also deemed
> to be the operator of the space station operating under his
> license.
> For those reasons, FCC licenses most Cubesats as experimental,
> not amateur. Experimental licenses do permit operators to be
> compensated. However, experimental stations may not
> communicate with amateur stations.
>
>
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