HamSCI at HamCon Colorado 2025

HamSCI made its first ever appearance at the 2025 HamCon Colorado/ARRL Rocky Mountain Division Convention, held 24-26 October, in Grand Junction, Colorado.

HamSCI had a table in the vendor/club room, passing out materials including Meteor Scatter QSO Party (MSQP) flyers, MSQP business cards, three editions of HamSCI newsletters, and business cards inviting people to join HamSCI as citizen scientist volunteers.  HamSCI brought posters describing various projects, such as the Contesting/DX Dashboard, the Meteor Scatter QSO Party and the Ground Magnetometer.  The latter generated a lot of interest - perhaps appealing to the technical nature and natural science curiosity of many attendees.  Staffing was provided by three HamSCI members (AF8A, W0DAS, KF7ZN) and KF7ZN's wife, Gaylene.

We were fortunate to have the WWV ARC (Ft. Collins, CO) table right next to us, staffed by Dave Swartz, W0DAS.  Of course, NIST time and frequency standard station WWV is key to many of our research efforts, and Dave has been instrumental in  providing/installing HamSCI research equipment and coordinating efforts with the technical staff at WWV.  Some attendees went home with unique bumper stickers (“I Set My Clocks to WWV”), that are sure to attract interest from local hams and time/frequency enthusiasts. 

HamCon is a forum-oriented event, rather than the flea market/commercial vendor focus of most regional ham radio gatherings.  This year’s HamCon was true to form, with well over 50 hour-long forums on Friday and Saturday.  HamSCI members filled multiple time slots with topics including the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station (Gary Mikitin, AF8A), WWV’s First Century (Dave Swartz, W0DAS), The Early Days of Ham Radio & DX’ing (Ron Wilcox, KF7ZN) and The Ionosphere (Ron Wilcox).  Other HamSCI members including Bill Mader, K8TE and Doug Leber, N0MM were also on the presentation schedule.