Citing poor health, AMSAT OSCAR Number Administrator — the individual who confers the alphanumeric designators on Amateur Radio satellites — has stepped down from the volunteer post after granting numbers to qualifying applicants for more than 2 decades.

“I want to thank Bill for his many dedicated years of service to AMSAT,” said AMSAT President Joe Spier, K6WAO, who named AMSAT Vice President-Operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, to succeed Tynan.

“Ever since the launch of OSCAR 1 in 1961, it has been traditional for Amateur Radio satellites to carry the name OSCAR — for ‘Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio,’” Spier explained.

OSCAR satellites are customarily referred to by hyphenated names, the first selected by the builder, AMSAT-OSCAR 7, abbreviated as AO-7. Spier called OSCAR numbers “a proud tradition of Amateur Radio, one that we hope to keep going for many years to come.”

A past AMSAT President, Tynan was licensed in 1946, initially as W3KMV. His requested W3XO in the 1970s because it was the call sign of Washington, DC’s first FM broadcast station in the experimental years. Involved in AMSAT-NA from the start, Tynan managed the “The World above 50 MHz” column in QST from 1975 until 1992.