[Ground-station] Update on donated dishes

[Michelle Thompson]

OK here's an update!

The dishes are still there, and Doug is reported to be alive and well. He's
currently on vacation. I left a message and hopefully we can get them
distributed soon.

-Michelle W5NYV




On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 9:21 AM Michelle Thompson <
mountain.michelle at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's some background and the current status as I understand it for the
> donated dishes that Doug Phelps is/was coordinating.
>
> At AMSAT Symposium 2017, Doug introduced himself to me, explained that he
> knew of some really neat dishes that we might be interested in, and offered
> to coordinate it if I could get a donation/tax letter for the company that
> owned them.
>
> The dishes were going to be scrapped, were in great shape, and fit our
> project and other similar projects pretty well. We talked in person,
> exchanged contact information, and continued to work out the details after
> the conference. I talked with him on the phone and over email several times
> and things moved forward.
>
> A donation letter was written from AMSAT to the vendor where the dishes
> were stored, and Doug started working on finding a shipping solution.
>
> We put out the call and got a lot of interest. Over half of the 30 dishes
> were spoken for by a variety of people and I offered to take the remaining
> ones so that Doug didn't get stuck with them.
>
> Doug gave two updates on shipping. The bought-new shipping costs for these
> dishes was very high, back when the vendor ordered them. Freight shipping
> is fairly reasonable. I suggested we combine some shipments to places like
> San Diego where multiple dishes would go.
>
> Around July 4th, Doug completely stopped replying to email and phone
> messages.
>
> Since I've been on travel since July, I didn't do anything more on this
> part of the project than write him every few weeks with offers to help and
> asking for updates.
>
> I was optimistic that Doug would resurface with a plan and schedule for
> shipping. At this point, I haven't heard from him in nearly 3 months. I've
> written or called over a dozen times. I hope he's ok.
>
> Next step: I'm going to call the vendor and ask them if the dishes are
> still there and see what we can/need to do to get them out to people that
> wanted them. It's a bit trickier to try and do this remotely. The dishes
> are in the midwest and I'm on the west coast (San Diego, CA).
>
> I'll do my best to restart the process and will update this post. Worst
> case, we'll just have to move on and keep looking for quality dishes for
> experiments and stations.
>
> -Michelle W5NYV
>
>
>
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