An Atlas of HamSCI’s PSWS Doppler Spectrograms

An Atlas of HamSCI’s PSWS Doppler Spectrograms

Saturday, May 30, 2026 - 19:38
Saturday, May 30, 2026 - 16:53
Submitted 9 hours 29 min ago by af8a.

Have you ever wondered how to interpret the Doppler shift spectrograms generated by Personal Space Weather Stations, eg Grape 1s, Grape 1 DRFs, Grape 2s, WSPRDaemon SDRs?  Wonder no more, as a team of skilled HamSCI volunteers has assembled an 'Atlas of Forms', showing examples of ionospheric phenomena as seen in Doppler shift spectrograms:  Read the Docs Atlas of Spectrograms

Many readers may wish to begin with the first topic, The Ionosphere and HF Propagation.

Following that, make your way through the well organized, easily navigated ReadThe Docs page, and you'll find PSWS spectrograms and explanations for the following propagation modes and PSWS use cases:
  • Surface (ground) waves between WWV and a nearby PSWS
  • One-hop E-Region
  • Sporadic E (Es)
  • One-hop F-Region
  • Two-hop F-region Side Scatter
  • Prolonged Two-hop F-region Side Scatter
  • Dawn Doppler
  • Traveling Ionospheric Distrubance
  • Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance (SID) and Doppler Flash
  • Solar Eclipse Effects
  • BPM (Time & frequency station in China) Reception
  • High and Low Ray (take-off angle) 
  • Geomagntic Storms
  • ..and more!

Scientific jargon is kept to a minimum, so this is truly information for all who have explored, deployed or otherwise taken an interest in HamSCI's various Personal Space Weather Station projects and campaigns. This work grew from a poster presented at the 2026 HamSCI Workshop in Newington, CT.

The community owes a dept of gratitude to Bob Mattaliano N6RFM, Gwyn Griffiths G3ZIL, Dave Swartz W0DAS, Mary Lou West KC2NMC, and Gary Mikitin AF8A. Special credit to Gwyn for creating the Read The Docs style repository!