Solar Eclipse QSO Party, Gladstone Signal Spotting Challenge to Coincide with Solar Eclipse, October 12, 2023

HamSCI Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science logo

 

Gary Mikitin, AF8A <gmikitinaf8a@gmail.com> writes on the HamSCI mailing list on October 7, 2023

Greetings, solar eclipse enthusiasts – Perhaps no reminders are needed, but just to be safe, here goes:  

 
The Solar Eclipse QSO Party and the Gladstone Signal Spotting Challenge will be held in ~1 week.  Both commence at 1200UTC on 14 October and continue for 12 hours, until 2200UTC.
 
Both rule pages (SEQP and GSSC) have been updated with log submission and entry details.  
  • An email address for bonus point file submissions has been added to both
  • The GSSC entry form, at the end of the rules page, is ready for post-contest use. 
  • The SEQP log submission robot will accept both Cabrillo and ADIF file types – which should be popular with FT4/8 operators
  • A Checklog entry category has been added to the SEQP.  Details below.
Annular Eclipse Saturday coincides with 4 popular state QSO parties (AZ, NV, SD and PA).  Some hams will choose to exclusively operate the state contests, and that’s fine.  If they are on the air, especially on CW or digital modes, their activity will add to the data collected by the automated receiving networks, a plus for HamSCI.  They may upload their AZ or NV or SD or PA logs as check logs using the SEQP robot and receive an SEQP participation certificate from HamSCI.
 
The SEQP log upload robot coding is almost complete – a link will be added to the SEQP rules just before the contest begins.
 
Questions?  Feel free to email them to the hamsci <at> hamsci <dot> org address.
 
73 de Gary, AF8A
HamSCI Amateur Radio Community Coordinator

Russian ARISS Team to Transmit SSTV, October 3-5, 2023

From ARISS:
 
From October 3-5, 2023, the Russian team will do a test of   some replacement components for the transmission of SSTV from the ISS–note, this is not a fully operational system yet. Some  SSTV images will be downlinked from the ISS on 145.800 MHz.
 
A full set of images is not expected as with previous sessions. This is  not an ARISS SSTV event, but posting your images to https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/  and giving SWL  reports will help to evaluate the test and are very welcome!
 
No ARISS SSTV awards will be given. A window may open at 1400 UTC  but start time for images is unclear.

Housatonic Amateur Radio Club Balloon Test “Highly Successful”

Members of the Housatonic Amateur Radio Club, Stratford CT, Dr. J. Pallis, KC1MHU, Gary Moyher, WE1M, and Larry Reed, AB1JC, along with University of Bridgeport and University of New Haven faculty and graduate students met at the University of Bridgeport’s Marina Park on September 22, 2023. There they put together the components of a balloon they will launch in Texas next month during the annular solar eclipse as part of NASA and Connecticut Space Grant Consortium’s 2023/2024 Solar Eclipse STEM projects. Here they tested the equipment with a tethered balloon full of helium.

It is estimated the balloon reached several hundred feet, which was sufficient to test the balloon, ground station, and the connections to University of Montana. The students practiced on the actual hardware they will use next month. All worked well, all was recovered and data was captured. This was a highly successful test. Students, university faculty and club members will fly to Texas next month to launch this payload during the annular solar eclipse and again fly to Texas in April, 2024, to launch another payload for the full Solar Eclipse.

HABGab and StratoScience Balloon Launch, Natick MA, July 2023

Seth Kendall, KC1PZY, writes on July 22, 2023 at 6:27 AM:

HABGab 2023 is officially on for today.  We will be launching from:

Tantasqua Vocational Regional High School

319 Brookfield Rd, Fiskdale, MA 01518

Frequencies, tracking information, updated countdown, etc:
https://nescitech.org/habgab

We will be starting on site set up at 9am.  Launch scheduled for 1pm.  We’d love to see you there or hear you on the air!

 
 
HABGab banner
 
 
From ema.arrl.org:
 
Seth Kendall, KC1PZY, writes:
 
Enjoy making rare contacts and participating in experimental projects?  The New England Weather Balloon Society, in partnership with the Sci-Tech Amateur Radio Society, is launching a special event high altitude balloon (HAB) repeater this July in Eastern Massachusetts. 
 
We would like to welcome all amateur radio operators in New England to participate in this experimental flight by calling into the repeater as it flies over 30 km high.  We will be issuing QSL cards to all confirmed contacts.
 
This flight will also be transmitting live video from the payload on 1.2 GHz, and live streaming to YouTube from our ground station at New England Sci-Tech.
 

Also traveling onboard will be a number of student projects by members of the StratoScience Lab class at New England Sci-Tech and BFCCPS school in Franklin, MA.

Please be aware that the date of the event is highly dependent on weather and readiness, so make sure to regularly check the HABGab Launch Page for up to date information about the date and instructions for making contact: https://nescitech.org/habgab.

 

Maine Mesh Network Communication Update #4

Maine iconMaine ASM Cory Golob, KU1U, writes:

Mesh Network Communication Update 4
Monday June 5, 2023

Bill NG1P went to Blackstrap Mountain in Falmouth on Thursday June 1, 2023 to get the site online. The Switch and Point-to-Point dish were installed. The dish is pointing at Brunswick, however, they are not optimized at the moment. The connection will be improved when the smaller
lightweight dish for Brunswick comes in.

The key task is making sure we do not have to visit sites more than once (to keep costs down). We do not have permission to install panel antennas at the moment, only an agreement in place is to install one antenna. Waiting for approval on panel antennas.

The Falmouth Site is operational and shows up on the Mesh dashboard, however, signal strength will be low until equipment comes in for Brunswick.

Lightweight Dishes are expected to arrive at the end of June. The Rocket Radios are not due to arrive until September.

The next step will be to start making a path from Brunswick to either Litchfield or Wales, depending on which site makes it easier to approve getting equipment installed. Talks are being held to use the Litchfield site.

The green light has been given to build the connection between Dixmont to Dedham.

Bill NG1P has submitted an invoice for the tower work done on Blackstrap in Falmouth and is pending payment from MARF. There is a major concern about the tower costs. When quotes were obtained it was $100 per hour once the climber arrived on scene plus travel costs, but the travel cost on the initial bill showed the $100 per hour as part of travel time. The grant will not be sustainable for the project at this rate. If anyone knows of insured climbers that can keep the costs more in line with what was quoted, please contact me.

We are also seeking assistance from people who can help out going to tower sites and assist with installation and also those who are interested in helping with the programming of equipment. Please let me know if you are interested, or know somebody, who may be interested in these duties. This should not be a one person job and it would be nice to see the community pitch in to offer technical assistance.

Respectfully Submitted,
Cory Golob

N1HAC: “Tracking Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances Using AM Broadcast Signals” at Dayton Hamvention, May 19, 2023

David McGaw, N1HAC
David McGaw, N1HAC (photo courtesy Dartmouth College)

HamSCI will be playing a major role at the 2023 Dayton Hamvention to be held in Xenia, Ohio May 19-21, 2023 at the Greene County Fairgrounds.  Booth talks, social hours and demonstrations will be given by ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station), HamSCI and YOTA (Youth on the Air).  

Among the HamSCI booth talks at Hamvention, David McGaw, N1HAC, Canaan, New Hampshire, will present “Tracking Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances Using AM Broadcast Signals.”

A physicist and electronics engineer, David McGaw has been connected with the Dartmouth Department of Physics and Astronomy since taking courses when he was a student at Hanover High School.  McGaw is involved in designing and building scientific instruments for the study of the Earth’s ionosphere, aurora and radiation belts. He holds an Amateur Extra class license and is a member of the Twin State Radio Club.

Test of High-Altitude Balloon Repeater, Natick MA, May 7, 2023

New England Sci-Tech logoFrom ema.arrl.org:

    Seth Kendall, KC1PZY, writes on the New England Sci-Tech mailing list:

We plan to hoist up our payloads as high as we can over [New England Sci-Tech] this Sunday (May 7th) at 1pm.  The payload will be running the full repeater setup and live video transmission for flight.

We’d like to invite anyone who might have line of sight with NEST to try calling in once we start the event to test the functioning and propagation.  Keep in mind, the repeater uses low power HTs with homemade Slim Jim antennas, so do not expect the level of performance achieved by the real NEST repeater.  It is also expected to get significantly better signal up in free space during the flight than it will on the ground.

We are putting out a call to see if anyone has a long, sturdy gopher pole or extendable mast that could be temporarily mounted on the roof and hold 5 lbs. up vertically without bending.

To participate, here is what you need to do:

  1. Set up your UHF/VHF radio to these frequencies:
    1. Uplink (your transmit): 446.05 MHz
    2. Downlink (your receive): 146.55 MHz
  2. Use the best dual band antenna you’ve got, or two single band antennas with duplexer.  Antenna height will help a lot.
  3. Write down your distance from NEST and include it in the exchange.
  4. We’ll try to have someone calling CQ as W1STR during the test and writing down contacts and distances.
  5. If you’d like to come join us at NEST during the event to help with setup and operation, come join us around noon.  We’ll either be in the makerspace or on the roof.  We can order some food as well.

We are also looking for a volunteer to try receiving the video signal from some place with direct line of sight that is further than right down the street.  Ideally 1-5 miles away (not expecting the kind of propagation we’ll get up in free space).

  1. If you’d like to volunteer, let me know. 
  2. You’ll need a laptop with Windows.
  3. You’ll need to come into NEST either on Saturday or Sunday so I can give you the receive antenna we are testing, the receiver hardware, and help you set up your computer to input and view the video feed.
  4. You’ll need to find a place with direct line of sight (that’s the hard part).

K1EHZ: “A Coupled-Resonator HF Antenna” Featured in April, 2023 QST

Kudos to Jay Taft, K1EHZ, for his article, “A Coupled-Resonator HF Antenna” which appears in the April, 2023 QST. Jay also has antenna designs published in The ARRL Antenna Book. 

Jay is an Amateur Extra class licensee. He earned his first license in 1958 at the age of 14, and his first job was servicing marine HF radios along the Connecticut coast. Jay has a bachelors degree in biology, as well as a Master’s and PhD degree in biological oceanography.  The Bedford, New Hampshire resident operates Winlink global email gateways and is a member of ARRL, New Hampshire ARES, the Merrimack Valley ARA and the Granite State ARA. 

 

[Note: On March 10th, Jay Taft, K1EHZ, along with John Stanley, K4ERO,  gave a presentation to the Granite State ARA on Comparing Coil Form Materials.  This presentation is related to his recent April 2023 QST article titled “A Coupled-Resonator HF Antenna”. You can find the video of the presentation on the GSARA YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF-OyD3eH-k]

HamSCI 6th Annual Workshop, March 17-18, 2023, Scranton PA

HamSCI Workshop 2023 screenshot

Come join HamSCI at its sixth annual hybrid in-person and virtual workshop March 17-18, 2023 at The University of Scranton. The primary objective of the HamSCI workshop is to bring together the amateur radio community and professional scientists. The theme of the 2023 HamSCI Workshop is Forging Amateur-Professional Bonds.

This workshop will also serve as a team meeting for the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station project, a NSF-funded project to develop a citizen science instrument for studying space weather from your backyard. The PSWS is led by the University of Scranton, and includes participation from TAPRCase Western Reserve University/W8EDU, the University of Alabama, the New Jersey Institute of Technology CSTRMIT Haystack ObservatoryDartmouth College, and the amateur radio community at large.

The 2023 HamSCI workshop is organized by The University of Scranton with generous financial support provided by the United States National Science Foundation and ARDC. HamSCI is an officially recognized NASA Citizen Science project. [More]

Meriden (CT) ARC Balloon Projects In Progress

From the Meriden ARC March 2023 newsletter “Key Klix:”

The [Meriden Amateur Radio Club] currently has two balloon projects in the works. On Saturday, 25 February, John, KB1MFU tested his balloon to see if it would meet specifications. The balloons were supposed to inflate to 3 feet in diameter which would hold a specific amount of helium allowing him to calculate the amount of lift it would have.

For the test, John used nitrogen gas to save on the more expensive helium. He set up the test in one of the garage bays at the firehouse and began to slowly inflate the balloon. The homebrew inflation nozzle that he made fit perfectly into the balloon allowing the gas tank to be connected. The Balloon filled to 1 foot in diameter then on to 2 feet. At about 2 1/2 feet the balloon burst. Not good for a 3 foot rated balloon.

Undaunted, John said that he would get replacement balloons, probably rated 3 1/2 to 4 foot diameter. Another test is in the works. They like to say that failure is not an option but having this test balloon fail now is better than having it fail on launch day. Without testing, failure is always an option.

Once the balloon itself passes the test, other components will be tested as well. Carry on, John. You have no where to go but up! Ted KC1DOY