Front Page News

Multiple members of the HamSCI Community contributed content to the new book Here to There: Radio Wave Propagation, recently published by the American Radio Relay League.  

Book chapters include the following:  Fundamentals of Radio Wave Propagation, The Sun and Solar Activity, Sky-Wave, or Ionospheric, Propagation, VHF and UHF Non-ionospheric Propagation, Propagation Predictions for HF Operation, VHF and UHF Mobile Propagation and Amateur Radio and Ionospheric Science.

Dr. Kristina Collins, KD8OXT, is the lead author on a new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Earth System Science Data entitled Crowdsourced Doppler measurements of time standard stations demonstrating ionospheric variability. The Grape Personal Space Weather Station is a low-cost, high frequency (HF) receiver designed to make precision measurements of signals received from frequency standards stations such as WWV, WWVH, and CHU. Because these standards stations transmit carriers with atomic-clock grade frequency stability, and the Grape receiver achieves similar frequency stability through the use of a GNSS Disciplined Oscillator, variations in the received signal can be attributed to changes in the ionosphere. The new paper demonstrates this in multiple ways, including showing changes in Doppler frequency due to the dawn and dusk terminators, seasonal variations, wave signatures with Medium Scale Traveling Ionospheric Disturbance periods, and the ionospheric response to solar flares. The paper also explains how to access Grape data and the open-source software used to conduct the analysis. The co-author team consists of professionals, students, and HamSCI volunteers, including Kristina Collins KD8OXT, John Gibbons N8OBJ, Nathaniel Frissell W2NAF, Aidan Montare KB3UMD, David Kazdan AD8Y, Darren Kalmbach KC0ZIE, David Swartz W0DAS, Robert Benedict KD8CGH, Veronica Romanek KD2UHN, Rachel Boedicker AC8XY, William Liles NQ6Z, William Engelke AB4EJ, David G. McGaw N1HAC, James Farmer K4BSE, Gary Mikitin AF8A, Joseph Hobart W7LUX, George Kavanagh KB1HFT, and Shibaji Chakraborty KN4BMT. The Grape receivers are the focus of an NSF-funded experiment to study the upcoming 2023 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses. More information on building your own Grape receiver is available at hamsci.org/grape.

Join the WWV Amateur Radio Club, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery (FCMoD), and the HamSCI for two excellent lectures to be live streamed on March 2, 2023 at 5:00PM Mountain Std Time (0000 UTC):

• The History of WWV Frequency Broadcasts - Glenn Nelson, WWV Staff, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• WWV as a Beacon for Citizen Science - Dr. David Kazdan and Rachel Boedicker - Case Western Reserve University/HamSCI  Aidan Montare - NIST Boulder/HamSCI

The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) will be conducting a research campaign on December 27, 2022, with transmissions between 1100-2300 UTC (0200-1400 AKST) on 9.6 MHz. Actual transmit times are highly variable based on real-time ionospheric conditions. All information is subject to change. Amateur radio operators are encouraged to listen for and record the echo of HAARP off of the asteroid and submit demodulated recordings in .wav or .mp3 format. See official HAARP press release for more information.