The Grape 1 project, launched at the HamSCI Workshop in March of 2019, has been made possible by a long list of talented and dedicated individuals, with support from a number of organizations. It is HamSCI's pleasure to acknowledge those individuals and organizations, here on our website.
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.
More than 50 researchers will be in Alaska in August for the resumption of a science summer school that culminates with experiments at the High-frequency Active Aurora Research Program facility operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.
The Polar Aeronomy and Radio Science Summer School was last held more than 10 years ago. Its return is provided for as part of a five-year $9.3 million National Science Foundation grant awarded to UAF in 2021. That funding allowed creation of the Subauroral Geophysical Observatory for Space Physics and Radio Science at HAARP. - Rod Boyce, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute
Dozens of Grape Personal Space Weather Stations are now on the air, and the network is growing on a regular basis. In the last week, stations in Ft Lauderdale, FL and Cleveland, OH were added to the Grape network. They were Node numbers 60 and 63, respectively. You can learn more about the Grape 1, including all of the details needed to build, operate and contribute data to the HamSCI PSWS Grape Server here. The full Grape story, with links to the Grape 1 and the up and coming Grape 2 are here on the HamSCI site.
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 March 3, 2023):
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/HamS
The 2023 Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP) is just a few short months away! The SEQP is a special operating event organized by the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) to study ionospheric effects caused by the October 14, 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse. During the SEQP, hams are asked to operate on the HF bands in a manner similar to contests or QSO parties. Systems such as the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN, www.reversebeacon.net), PSKReporter (pskreporter.info), WSPRNet (wsprnet.org), and participant logs will provide the QSO and spot data that will be used by researchers at the University of Scranton, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Virginia Tech to study eclipse-induced ionospheric effects. Full event rules and operating procedures are available at hamsci.org/seqp. Let us know where you plan to be and what modes you plan to operate. To do this, visit the SEQP Pre-Registration page at hamsci.org/seqp-prereg. We look forward to hearing you on the air!
Members of the HamSCI team are in Charlotte, North Carolina this Friday through Sunday to present at the ARRL-TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC). The ARRL-TAPR DCC is an annual conference that presents leading ideas related to amateur radio electrical engineering and related fields. This year, members of HamSCI will be presenting on topics related to the upcoming 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses, the development of the Personal Space Weather Station, including the Grape HF Doppler Receiver, VLF receiver, and TangerineSDR wideband receiver. Additional presentations include advances in analysis of Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances observed both with large-scale amateur radio reporting systems (RBN/WSPRNet/PSKReporter) and the Grape Personal Space Weather Station, as well as the initial public release of pyLap, the new open-source Python-based interface to the PHaRLAP HF ray tracing toolkit. The entire DCC is being live streamed via the TAPR Digital YouTube Channel. You can download the conference agenda here.
HamSCI submitted two white papers to the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033. The first white paper, entitled Amateur Radio: An Integral Tool for Atmospheric, Ionospheric, and Space Physics Research and Operations, discusses the technical capabilities of the amateur radio community and the open scientific questions and space weather operational needs that can be addressed with these capabilities. The second paper, Fostering Collaborations with the Amateur Radio Community, talks about how the professional science space science community and the amateur radio community can work together for mutual benefit and provides recommendations for fostering this relationship. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is the body in the United States charged with setting the highest level science priorities for the United States. Every 10 years, the NAS conducts a decadal survey of the community to help set these priorities. This current Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) will be the guiding document for space science research and operations for NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and congress from 2024-2033.
A new study by Sam Lo et al. from the Centre for Space at the University of Bath entitled "A Systematic Study of 7 MHz Greyline Propagation Using Amateur Radio Beacon Signals" was just published in the peer-reviewed journal Atmosphere.Abstract: This paper investigates 7 MHz ionospheric radio wave propagation between pairs of distant countries that simultaneously lie on the terminator. This is known as greyline propagation. Observations of amateur radio beacon transmitters recorded in the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) database are used to investigate the times of day that beacon signals were observed during the year 2017. The WSPR beacon network consists of thousands of automated beacon transmitters and observers distributed over the globe. The WSPR database is a very useful resource for radio science as it offers the date and time at which a propagation path was available between two radio stations, as well as their precise locations. This paper provides the first systematic study of grey-line propagation between New Zealand/Eastern Australia and UK/Europe. The study shows that communications were predominantly made from the United Kingdom (UK) to New Zealand at around both sunset and sunrise times, whereas from New Zealand to the UK, communication links occurred mainly during UK sunrise hours. The lack of observations at the UK sunset time was particularly evident during the UK summer. The same pattern was found in the observations of propagation from Eastern Australia to UK, and from New Zealand and Eastern Australia to Italy and the surrounding regions in Europe. The observed asymmetry in reception pattern could possibly be due to the increase in electromagnetic noise across Europe in the summer afternoon/evening from thunderstorms. URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/13/8/1340
