I stopped being an AMSAT-NA member something like 15 years ago, when it became clear that the organization was really only interested in FM LEO sats. I understand some of the reasons for this direction, but I was not enthused by the single-mindedness of it.
Meanwhile many other countries have had very diverse and successful programs getting multiple-mode and multiple-band satellites built and launched. So many interesting ones, by so many countries. Of course the standout is China, where they have recently built and launched a large number of multi-mode and multi-band LEO sats, and seem to have taken the lead when it comes to space program enthusiasm and success.
Then over time, we heard more frequently from AMSAT-NA about increasing financial troubles, along with rather large amounts of money being spent to design and build satellite hardware, by some contracted company. This made me wonder what a skilled, industry-connected, volunteer non-profit like AMSAT-NA was thinking when it decided to pay a contractor thousands of dollars to do what was essentially AMSAT's job. Maybe my view and information were inaccurate, but that's what I thought. I really was annoyed by the seemingly endless spending of money that the organization seemed to be caught up in. And now we hear that even recently AMSAT-NA was using funds paid by membership dues to retain lawyers! What on earth does AMSAT leadership have any business spending valuable and increasingly scarce membership dues money for legal protection? And for protection from its own from Board members no less! Ridiculous. That money is supposed to be for building and launching satellites, and for education purposes. AMSAT-NA's own Mission statement starts with this: "AMSAT’s goal is to foster Amateur Radio’s participation in space research and communication." I don't see any mention of the goal being to support legal squabbling between members of the Board or Leadership team.
I searched extensively to uncover membership records of AMSAT-NA over the years and through various means I found out how it successfully grew over 30 times in size in the 1970s and 1980s, but also how drastically its membership had crashed from somewhere around 8000 members in the mid-1990s to something like 3100 by 2012. It seems to have recovered a a few percent since then, but is still struggling to grow, in spite of the large number of satellites in orbit and users these days. Am I surprised? Because of the above disturbing topics, I am not at all surprised.
I wanted to rejoin AMSAT-NA. But with all the shenanigans I've heard about going on there, it is increasingly unlikely that it will happen.
I think I will just join AMSAT-UK instead.
73, Ed