Ash Chaabane, 3V/KF5EYY, reports that a new Reverse Beacon Network (reversebeacon.net) node has been successfully installed in Tunisia. There will soon be an Algerian and Libyan node when logistics permit. The Tunisian node consists of a DX Engineering ARAV4-1P active vertical antenna (see the photo, contributed by Ash), a Red Pitaya 122-16 SDR, and CW Skimmer software by VE3NEA. You can see the stations reported on several bands by the new node at https://dxcluster.ha8tks.hu/azimuthal_map/index.php?c=3V/KF5EYY&t=de. This node was part of a Yasme Foundation (yasme.org) project to install more RBN nodes in out-of-the-way places not currently home to a receiver. The project aims to support both the amateur radio community and spaceweather/geophysics research community with propagation information from around the world and raise awareness of amateur radio's long-standing history of supporting science. Additional nodes are planned for the Caribbean, South Pacific, and Russia, while other groups are installing nodes in Australia.
Video recordings of the third annual HamSCI Workshop are now available through the Ham Radio 2.0 YouTube Channel. The 2020 HamSCI Workshop for amateur radio operators and professional scientists was held Friday and Saturday, March 20-21, 2020, virtually on Zoom at The University of Scranton. The theme of the workshop was “The Auroral Connection,” and included addresses by guest speakers, poster presentations, and demonstrations of relevant instrumentation and software.
If you’ve come to https://k9la.us because of your interest in propagation, the following is a mini-guided tour to help you navigate to the material you’re interested in. The home page gives a basic introduction, and new items and relevant old items are listed here (usually at the beginning of each month). On the left side of the home page are links that contain material specific to certain aspects of propagation in our Amateur Radio hobby. The Monthly Feature link offers articles about a myriad of topics. These topics are often tied to observations of ionospheric propagation and measurements of solar and ionospheric data. Some important topics that have been covered are the new sunspot numbers (the April 2016 document), the ongoing study of gravity waves and travelling ionospheric disturbances (the March 2020 document) and a look at propagation on our 630-meter and 2200-meter bands (the December 2018 document). As a side note, many HamSCI participants are involved in the gravity wave/TIDs studies.
HamSCI is seeking volunteers, especially in the Eastern Hemisphere, to help us collect data during the annular solar eclipse on June 21. There will be two data collection periods: A practice/control period on June 14 for participants to get their stations in order, and the main data collection period from June 20-22 UTC.
The 2020 HamSCI Workhop will go on! We are moving to an all-digital workshop using Zoom Webinar Services. Registration and participation is free and open to all. Exact details on how to register and participate will be posted to hamsci.org/hamsci2020 no later than Wednesday, March 18th. To prepare and make sure you are ready to participate in the 2020 HamSCI Workshop, please visit the Zoom Website and create free account.
As of March 11, 2020, we have continued to monitor the coronavirus situation and find that it is no longer feasible to hold an in-person HamSCI workshop this year. This has been a very difficult decision to make, as a tremendous amount of planning and effort by many people have gone into preparing for the workshop. We will refund all registrations for this event. Please take this time to cancel any travel arrangements you may have made to attend the workshop.
Registration is now open for the third annual HamSCI Workshop. The 2020 HamSCI Workshop for amateur radio operators and professional scientists will be held Friday and Saturday, March 20-21, at The University of Scranton. The theme of the workshop is “The Auroral Connection,” and will include addresses by guest speakers, poster presentations and demonstrations of relevant instrumentation and software. All ham radio operators, scientists, and people interested in ionospheric and space physics are welcome to attend.
HamSCI and the Case Amateur Radio Club W8EDU is sponsoring a distributed experiment during the WWV 100th anniversary celebrations. The Festival of Frequency Measurement invites all interested to record WWV's 5 MHz carrier for the UTC day 1 October 2019--and then to upload the resulting data file. Amateur radio operators, shortwave listeners, physics laboratories, and anyone else with a radio receiver and computer may part
By Nathaniel A. Frissell (W2NAF), Philip J. Erickson (W1PJE), Ethan S. Miller (K8GU), William Liles (NQ6Z), Kristina Collins (KD8OXT), David Kazdan (AD8Y), and Nathaniel Vishner (KB1QHX)
Photo by Laura Gooch (N8NFE)
The Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) is an international collective of professional researchers and amateur radio operators working together to simultaneously advance the fields of space science and amateur (ham) radio activities. The 2nd US HamSCI meeting was held March 22-23, 2019, organized by Nathaniel Frissell of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and hosted by the Case Amateur Radio Club (Case ARC) at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, OH. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Ionospheric Effects and Sensing,” which includes the use of amateur radio techniques for the characterization and observational study of ionospheric phenomena such as traveling ionospheric disturbances, sporadic E, response to solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and other space weather events.
HamSCI contributor Nick Hall-Patch, VE7DXR, presents observations of changes in AM Broadcast propagation during the 21 August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. Full text of the article is available here.
This article starts with a brief description of historical observations that have been made concerning the effects of solar eclipses on the strengths of distant medium wave signals. It continues with a description of how medium-wave DXers used software defined radios (SDRs) for the first time during the solar eclipse of August 2017 to record the entire AM broadcast band (535-1705kHz) for later analysis. Although no plan had been made to create a formal experiment, it appears to be possible to use the data collected to analyze the effect of the eclipse on radio propagation. An example is presented, derived from recordings made at four different receiver locations in western North America, describing large variations in the signal strength from Salt Lake City's KSL-1160kHz during the course of the eclipse. The times that peak signal strengths occurred at the four locations are then compared relative to the times of eclipse totality along the signal paths.
