Personal Space Weather Station News

A $1.3 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to University of Scranton physics and electrical engineering professor Nathaniel Frissell, Ph.D., seeks to harness the power of a network of licensed amateur radio operators to better understand and measure the effects of weather in the upper levels of Earth’s atmosphere. The highly-competitive grant awarded by NSF’s Aeronomy Program for the project titled Distributed Arrays of Small Instruments (DASI) will be implemented over a three-year period. As lead principal investigator, Dr. Frissell, a space physicist, will lead a collaborative team that will develop modular, multi-instrument, ground-based space science observation equipment and data collection and analysis software. He will also recruit multiple universities and ham radio users to operate the network of “Personal Space Weather Stations” developed.

As part of the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station project, TAPR is charged with developing a Scientific Software Defined Radio that operates from a few kHz up to 30 MHz with a focus on flexibility, high precision stability, and accurate time stamping. TAPR has taken this charge to develop the TangerineSDR, a modular software defined radio that will not only meet HamSCI's PSWS needs, but also many other applications. In the videos below, the chief architect of the TangerineSDR, Scotty Cowling, WA2DFI, shows off a mock-up of the new radio at the 39th Annual ARRL-TAPR Digital Communications Conference that took place in Detroit, MI from September 11-13, 2020. People who would like to participate in PSWS and TangerineSDR development are encouraged to visit tangerinesdr.com, join the TAPR TangerineSDR listserv, and join in the Monday night TeamSpeak telecons.

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 will again be at the Dayton Hamvention as part of the new Ham Radio 2.0: Innovation and Discovery area sponsored by the Yasme Foundation. Come visit the HamSCI Booth and Forum to learn about projects on the cutting edge of ham radio science and engineering research, including new directions in Sporadic E research, causes of F region ionospheric variability, how propagation works on the new 630 and 2200 m bands, the Personal Space Weather Station, and more. Hamvention will be held May 17-19, 2019 at the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia, Ohio.

The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) has recognized the need to join the amateur radio and professional science communities through a recent grant award to support the upcoming HamSCI Workshop from March 22-23, 2019 in Cleveland, OH. The conference is hosted by the Case Western Reserve University Amateur Radio Club and organized and administered by the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The NSF conference grant from the Geosciences Directorate will provide important facilitation for conference activities and associated logistics.

A new study, High‐Frequency Communications Response to Solar Activity in September 2017 as Observed by Amateur Radio Networks, by HamSCI researchers has been published in the American Geophysical Union journal Space Weather. The article is available for free from the journal website.

Plain Language Summary: Radio communications using the high‐frequency (HF) bands (3–30 MHz) is important for emergency communications because it is the only form of electronic communications that can travel over the horizon without relying on man‐made infrastructure such as the Internet, satellite systems, or phone networks. This is possible because HF rays can be bent back to Earth by the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere. Space weather events such as X‐ray flares from the Sun and geomagnetic storms can alter the ionosphere to disrupt these communications. During September 2017, a significant number of solar flares and geomagnetic activity occurred. Simultaneously, major hurricanes, including Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Jose, caused situations in the Caribbean region requiring the use of emergency HF communications, often provided by ham (amateur) radio operators. This paper shows the impacts of these space weather disturbances on HF communications as observed by multiple ham radio monitoring systems.

Registration is now open for the 2019 HamSCI Workshop to be held at Case Western Reserve University, W8EDU, in Cleveland, OH from March 22- 23, 2019. This year’s theme will be “Ionospheric Effects and Sensing,” which includes the use of amateur radio techniques for the characterization and study of ionospheric phenomena such as traveling ionospheric disturbances, sporadic E, response to solar flares, geomagnetic storms, the 2024 total solar eclipse other space weather events. In order to facilitate this science, continued development of the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station and discussion of integration of amateur radio into the collegiate curriculum will also take place. Featured speakers include well-known amateur radio author Ward Silver, N0AX, propagation specialist Carl Luetzelschwab, K9LA, and MIT Haystack Observatory Research Scientist Dr. Larisa Goncharenko. Participants are invited to submit abstracts and present. Please visit http://hamsci.org/hamsci2019 for registration and abstract submission. This workshop is hosted by Case Western Reserve University in collaboration with New Jersey Institute of Technology.

This week, many HamSCI members are presenting their research at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C. The AGU Fall meeting is one of the largest geoscience meetings in the world, and consists of about 24,000 attendees. The scientific program includes sessions pertaining to all areas of geophysics, including space weather, the solar wind, auroral activity, the ionosphere, and the neutral atmosphere. Below is a list of selected presentations and sessions being given by HamSCI members, or of general interest to ham radio operators. The complete scientific program is available here.

CQ Amateur Radio Magazine published an article by Rich Moseson, W2VU, about the 2018 HamSCI meeting in the May 2018 issue entitled, "A Virtuous Cycle: Hams and Scientists Helping Each Other". The 2018 HamSCI Workshop was held at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) February 23-24, 2018 and brought together hams and space scientists from across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Over 60 people in attended, and presentations included results from the 2017 Great American Eclipse, ideas for a personal space weather station, and other amateur radio-space science experiments and projects. PDFs of most presentations from the workshop are available here. Full text of the CQ Article is available here (Copyright CQ Communications, Inc., Posted by permission).