A few years ago I had trouble understanding why hams were putting computers in their shacks. The darn things made a lot of noise and as far as I could see didn’t have a thing to do with radio communications. Then an article in ORBIT magazine offered to help me plot satellite orbits and with the promise of a very useful bird about to be launched, phase 3В, I thought I’d better see if there was really something that a computer could bе used for. The TS1000 was making a big splash at the time and AMSAT was offering software for it that would tell me where and when I should expect to be able to hook up with DX via satellite.