Active Projects

	Project	Description	Science Questions

	Personal Space Weather Station	The Personal Space Weather Station project ultimately aims to create a small, multi-instrument system that can make ground-based measurements of the space environment.	How does the ionosphere respond to inputs from space and from the neutral atmosphere? How does the ionosphere couple with the neutral atmosphere and with space?
	Eclipse and Frequency Measurement Festivals	Eclipse and Frequency Measurement Festivals are worldwide citizen science campaigns in which hams and shortwave listeners measure Doppler shift from their home stations, using their regular HF receivers.	How does the ionosphere couple with the neutral atmosphere and with space? How do solar eclipses impact ionospheric structure and dynamics?
	Sources and Measurement of Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances	Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs) are variations in the ionosphere that can impact medium frequency (MF) and high frequency (HF) radio communications through fading (QSB) and by causing variations in communications distance. In this project, we use data from large-scale amateur radio networks such as the Reverse Beacon Network, WSPRnet, and PSKReporter to study the sources, characteristics, and dynamics of TIDs.	How does energy move from the lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere to generate TIDs? What percentage of observed TIDs correlated with geomagnetic activity what percentage are not? What is the TID longitudinal dependence on 2D stratospheric polar vortex configuration?

Other Projects

	Project	Description	Science Questions
	2017 Total Solar Eclipse	On 21 August 2017, a total solar eclipse caused the shadow of the moon to traverse the United States from Oregon to South Carolina in just over 90 minutes. Use amateur radio to study the impacts of the eclipse on the ionosphere.	How does the ionosphere couple with the neutral atmosphere and with space? How do solar eclipses impact ionospheric structure and dynamics?
	Amateur Radio Response to Solar Flares and Geomagnetic Storms	Solar flares and geomagnetic storms can significantly impact the ability to commicute on the medium and high frequency (300 kHz - 30 MHz bands). Solar flares cause radio blackouts due to collisional absorption from enhanced D-region ionization, especially on the lower frequencies. Geomagnetic storms can cause large-scale depletions of ionospheric densities that can reduce the maxium usable frequency (MUF) on a global scale. These impacts can be observed in large-scale amateur radio networks such as the Reverse Beacon Network, WSPRnet, and PSKReporter.	How do solar flares affect ionospheric dynamics and HF radio communications? How do geomagnetic storms affect ionospheric dynamics and HF radio communications?
	Swarm-E / e-POP	Swarm-E (formerly CASSIOPE/e-POP) is a Canadian satellite with a Radio Receiver Instrument (RRI) capabale of receiving HF radio signals. We use the Swarm-E RRI to listen to HF amateu radio signals from Earth to detect ionospheric sturcture and the effects of the ionosphere on those radio waves.	How are radio waves affected as they propagate through the ionosphere? How does ionospheric structure affect the ability of HF radio waves to propagate into space?