06-10-2017, 05:25 PM
Pat Gowen, G3IOR, of Norwich, Norfolk, passed away on August 17, after a long illness. He was 85.
The amateur-satellite world has lost one of its true pioneers. Pat was a co-founder of AMSAT-UK, and elected to the board of directors of AMSAT-NA in 1974. He was also long time satellite columnist of Practical Wireless, as well as a frequent contributor to The AMSAT Journal and Oscar News.
He was the first to work 100 DXCC entities via satellite (all LEOs), and received Satellite DXCC No. 4 when his QSL cards arrived. Fluent in Russian, Pat enjoyed conversing with the cosmonauts aboard MIR and ISS.
More recently, Pat was the first to discover the re-birth of AMSAT-OSCAR 7 when its battery returned to life in sunlight.
From text edition for OCT 08 2017 - VK NATIONAL NEWS BROADCAST ON VK1WIA : http://www.wia.org.au/members/broadcast/wianews/
Also in MP3 edition of news available at: http://www.wia-files.com/podcast/wianews-2017-10-08.mp3
The amateur-satellite world has lost one of its true pioneers. Pat was a co-founder of AMSAT-UK, and elected to the board of directors of AMSAT-NA in 1974. He was also long time satellite columnist of Practical Wireless, as well as a frequent contributor to The AMSAT Journal and Oscar News.
He was the first to work 100 DXCC entities via satellite (all LEOs), and received Satellite DXCC No. 4 when his QSL cards arrived. Fluent in Russian, Pat enjoyed conversing with the cosmonauts aboard MIR and ISS.
More recently, Pat was the first to discover the re-birth of AMSAT-OSCAR 7 when its battery returned to life in sunlight.
From text edition for OCT 08 2017 - VK NATIONAL NEWS BROADCAST ON VK1WIA : http://www.wia.org.au/members/broadcast/wianews/
Also in MP3 edition of news available at: http://www.wia-files.com/podcast/wianews-2017-10-08.mp3