This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com. And by ICOM, heard it, worked it, logged
it. Visit www .icomamerica .com slash amateur
for more information about ICOM radios. Hello
everyone! It's time for HamTalk Live. It's episode
number 314, The HamSci Conference 2023. This
was recorded on Thursday, February 16th, 2023.
I'm your host, Neil Rapp. My call sign is WB9VPG.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of HamTalk
Live. Tonight we're joined by Dr. Nathaniel Verzell,
W2NAF, and Gary McKeaton, AF8A. Last time here
on the show, I was live in Orlando at Hamcation
2023 with Michael Colley, the chairman of Hamcation,
W4ORL, thanks to the entire Hamcation team for
all the hospitality. And if you missed the show,
You can listen anytime at HamTalkLive .com or
on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. So
that's what's been happening. Happy to be back
too. Got a little allergy mess going on when
I got back. So I've been kind of fighting that
off a little bit, but it's great to get down
there and great to be back with you all. once
again. But we'll get back to the show and back
with Nathaniel and Gary right after this word
from Tower Electronics right here on HamTalk
Live. Jerry, what's up, man? I haven't seen you
at Sunbucks in a while. I used to see you every
morning getting coffee. What's up? Well, I can't
afford Sunbucks five days a week anymore. I had
to spend my money on PL -259s. You know, those
antenna projects I've been meaning to do. I had
to do them before my HOA finds out I have antennas.
That's too bad, Jerry. I miss seeing you and
catching up over coffee. You should get your
PL -259s from Tower Electronics. They have great
stuff. Jerry, you're back! Oh, QRM Heterodyne
Frappuccino. That's a good choice. How's it going?
Did you get all those antennas up before the
HOA police showed up? Yeah, I got them all done.
Thanks for telling me about Tower Electronics.
Now I can have my coffee. I just saved a bunch
of money on my PL259s by switching to Tower Electronics.
Don't get caught without PL259s. Visit Tower
Electronics online at PL -259 .com or at a ham
fest near you or give them a call at 920 -435
-2973 and be sure to pick up some power poles,
adapters and cables too. And on the Tower Electronics
ham fest schedule, Dalton George is coming up
on February 25th. March 4th will be in Cave City,
Kentucky. March 19th, Maumee, Ohio. March 25th,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Or visit them online at
PL -259 .com. HamTalk Live. The longer you listen,
the later it gets. Welcome back to HamTalk Live.
Tonight, Dr. Nathaniel Frisell, W2NAF, and Gary
McKitton, AF8A. Join us on the Orlando Amateur
Radio Club and Hamcation Zoom line. Dr. Nathaniel
Frisell, W2NAF, is an assistant professor. at
the University of Scranton in physics where he
teaches digital signal processing fundamental
physics and electromagnetics and he is the lead
organizer of HamSci a project that explores how
amateur radio can help us understand more about
the physics of the ionosphere and he was the
2019 Dayton Hamvention amateur of the year and
Gary McKeaton AF8A is a dedicated CW operator
in Mayfield Village, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland.
And he is the amateur radio coordinator for HamSci's
2023 and 2024 solar eclipse QSO parties and Gladstone
signal spotting challenges. So guys, thanks for
joining us tonight. You're welcome. It's a pleasure
to be here, Neil. Good to be a part of it. Well,
Gary, we're gonna talk to you about some of these
solar eclipse Q so parties coming up here in
just a little bit but first things first Nathaniel,
this is Is this the third year for the? Ham side
conference fourth year with This is a six year
Ham side workshop. Yeah time flies. So I know
the sixth year for uh... the hands -on workshop
and it has grown and uh... it will be the fourth
the fourth one that's in person the fourth in
person what okay that's good we had to do a virtual
for two years here's your virtual book this is
our six annual conference and it's our fourth
in person one so uh... i was looking at the uh...
the agenda and wow, you've got quite the agenda
for this. Some really cool topics and a lot of
them. So just give us a little bit of a rundown
of what the HamSci Conference is and what's going
to be happening this year. And you're staying
home at Scranton this time, right? We are staying
home at Scranton, yes. So yeah, the HamSci Workshop
is an annual workshop that the aim is to bring
together professional space scientists with the
amateur radio community. And so it's really a
blend of these two communities. The workshop
is funded by the National Science Foundation
and ARDC. And we have many different topics pertaining
to amateur radio and radio science. So it's going
to be over two days this year. It will be March
17th, Friday, March 17th and Saturday, March
18th, 2023. And the Friday day is organized very
much like a scientific conference where you have
fairly fast paced oral presentations all day
long. So we've got 20 minute oral presentations
and we split it up into different topics. We
have In the morning, we're talking about the
Hampside Personal Space Weather Station. Then
we're going to be talking about ionospheric modeling
and traveling ionospheric disturbances. In the
afternoon, we have the Festival of Eclipse Ionospheric
Science and the Solar Eclipse QSO parties. And
then in the late afternoon, we talk about solar
flare impacts and radio astronomy in the aurora.
And I think one of the things that's really neat
about this conference is we really get to fly
people in from all over the country and now even
all over the world to come talk about the things
that they're studying. So we just have a very
wonderful diverse speaker list of people who
are both experts in their fields. We have students,
we have amateurs, they're all coming together.
It's very exciting. Well anytime you can mix
science and ham radio I'm all over it being the
the chemist that I am, but it's a great opportunity
to share all these things and find out what everybody
else is doing and get some ideas even. I agree.
And we have a number of invited speakers as well.
So on Friday night, we're going to have a banquet.
We have a keynote speaker, Dr. Patricia Reif.
She's a professor at Rice University, and she's
also the founder of the Rice Space Institute.
And she's going to be giving a keynote talk of
forging bonds between amateurs and professionals.
And she's really neat because she is really quite
famous in the space physics community. She's
an American Geophysical Union Fellow, and she
also has a very strong history in amateur radio.
She has developed amateur radio courses at the
collegiate level, and she uses amateur radio
as a way of teaching physics and space physics.
And then on Saturday morning, we have Dr. Joseph
Huba of Syntech Technologies and formerly of
the Naval Research Laboratory. He is the developer
of a physics -based ionospheric model called
SAMI -3 which we're going to be using for studying
the upcoming eclipses and also Jesse Alexander
WB2 -IFS from the Naval, I'm sorry, from the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the NRAO,
and he's running a special program to bring in
underrepresented peoples into amateur radio.
So it's really exciting to have all these people
come. Wow, that sounds like some great topics.
and some great people presenting them. And then,
that's Friday. What's Saturday look like here?
Well, Saturday starts off with the invited speakers,
Joe Hube and Jesse Alexander. And then we have
a few more oral presentations. NASA had a space
apps hackathon challenge earlier this year where
they challenged people in 48 hours to come up
with some sort of new technique for studying
the ionosphere using amateur radio data and existing
models. And so we have one of the winning teams
from that group. They'll be coming to present
their work and they're coming in from United
Kingdom and from Poland and possibly from Egypt.
Then we have some more general interest topics
of history of de -exing and contesting. And we
have one person who was participating in the
AWRL propagation experiments in 1957, the International
Geophysical Year. And in the afternoon, we have
some more hands -on workshops. So Ed Hare from
the AWRL headquarters, Ed Hare, W1RFI, he'll
be coming giving a workshop on using propagation
analysis software and antenna modeling to select
antennas. for receive and transmit sites. We
have Case Western Reserve University, their amateur
radio club, WAEDU. They're going to be doing
a number of hands -on workshops. We're going
to have a tour where the new University of Scranton
amateur radio station is being funded by the
ARDC. We have a tour of where that's going to
be. We have exhibits of boat anchor equipment.
from the 1930s up through the present. We're
going to be giving tours of that, just all sorts
of different things. And we have lots of posters
to research posters, posters about local organizations.
These are posters that are given by students,
by other faculty members at the university, other
students from other universities, quite a bit
going on. And you can see the whole agenda. If
you go to hamsi .org, there's a big banner that
takes you to the conference web page. You can
read the whole agenda there for yourself. And
if you want, you can come to Scranton, and you
can participate in person yourself. And if you
can't make it to Scranton, we're making all the
oral presentations still be available streamed
online. So you'll be able to join in virtually
for free. Excellent excellent. Well, I know that
you're excited about that tour of where the ham
radio station is going to be you Shared some
of those play. Yeah, and it's it's going to be
one nice station. So You're excited about getting
that going And then I have to put in a plug for
one of our for one of our Yoda campers that that's
showing up so Tell us a little bit about what
Dylan's doing. Oh, Dylan Romero, he is one of
the Youth on the Air campers and he's going to
be talking about Youth on the Air at the Hamside
Workshop. So he'll have a little booth and demonstration
and he'll talk all about the camp. And he's actually
not the only Yoda camper that's going to be there,
right? Yeah, that's right. We have another one
that you know very well. At Scranton, our very
own Veronica Romanek. She will also be there.
She'll be giving a presentation on her research,
but I'm sure she'll also hang out at the Yoda
booth as well. And Dylan's working on a case,
is that right? Yeah. So we are for the personal
space weather station. We're still working on
developing this tangerine software to find radio.
So Dylan's going to help design a case that the
electronics can go inside. So that is it. upcoming
project that he's going to be working on. All
right. Well, you know, one of the other things
on the list is Gary. Gary, tell us a little bit
about what you'll be talking about at the Hampside
Conference. Sure. The solar eclipses that are
coming up late in 2023 and early in 2024 across
North America are great opportunities for researching
how the sun and the ionosphere react and work
against and work with one another. And the Solar
Eclipse QSO party, there's a couple of events
which will put a lot of amateurs on the air during
those eclipses and will be generating a lot of
data that Nathaniel and other researchers will
be able to use to someday hopefully improve propagation
forecasting and learn, well, who knows what about
the ionosphere going forward. You know, that's
one of the things about science is You study
things and you never know what you may or may
not end up with So you just you just don't know
and so the more you study it the more you understand
it the more Possibilities are there and so that'll
be it'll be really cool. And I know This eclipse
is going over almost exactly over my former QTH
from just a couple years ago. So I may have to
call up some friends and say, hey, can I come
hang out in your backyard for a little bit or
something? But we'll dive into those more here
in just a little bit. So Nathaniel, tell everybody
if they want to come to Scranton and hear about
all this stuff, how do they do that? It's very
simple, Neil. You just go to hamsci .org and
you can follow the banner that takes you right
to the conference page and you're able to register
there. The hotel information is on there as well.
So just follow the information there and you
can come over to Scranton. And very shortly we'll
also, the Zoom link is not posted yet but within
the next week or so I'll get the Zoom link up
there as well. Okay. Very good. Well, we're going
to talk some more about the HamSci conference
and the solar eclipse QSO parties with Nathaniel
and Gary. We'll do that right after this word
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Oh yeah, you're talking ham radio baby. You're
listening to Ham Talk Live with Neil Rapp. And
welcome back to HamTalk Live. Be sure to check
us out on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You'll
learn a little bit more about the show there,
so be sure you do that. Well, right now we're
going to get back to Dr. Nathaniel Frisell, W2NAF,
and Gary McKeaton, AFAA, from AmSci. But first,
it's time for the Choke of the Week. Now it's
time for the HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of the
Week, the part of the show where Rick tells us
a ham radio joke. The HamTalk Live Ham Radio
Joke of the Week is brought to you by QRM Labs.
Now here's Rick Garrett in 9GSU with today's
HamTalk Live Joke of the Week. I was having a
terrible time getting my new radio to... pair
up with the Bluetooth on my phone. I renamed
the radio as Titanic and it's syncing now. All
right, we are back with Dr. Nathaniel Frizzell
W2NAF and Gary McKeaton AF8A and we're talking
about the upcoming HamSci activities. We have
the conference coming up in March and again,
make sure you check that out at HamSci .org if
you want to go or if you want to attend virtually
you can do that as well. But Gary, let's talk
a little bit about these solar eclipse queso
parties and we had had one that hit north america
and then some that that were outside of north
america and now uh... we're going to be hitting
uh... a big one here in the midwest so uh...
tell us about these uh... queso parties coming
up and what they're trying to accomplish okay
so we've got two upcoming events in october of
twenty three october of this year we're going
to have an annular eclipse, so most of the Sun
will be covered by the Moon, and of course in
April of 2024 we'll have a full eclipse transiting
a good part of North America. And what Nathaniel
and the other researchers have asked for is as
much radio QSO or contact data as we can possibly
gather during these eclipses. And what I mean
is, you know, these QSO parties, which are a
fairly common thing throughout the entire ham
radio calendar during the year, they're a part
of a very popular ham radio subculture called
contesting. And that's where during a specific
date and a specific time, a large number of amateurs
will get on the air. In our case, it's going
to be a short way over the high frequency bands
and simply make contact with one another. The
contacts are brief. They're very numerous. We'll
have people in a 12 -hour period that will probably
make over 1 ,000 contacts. And one of the elements
of this contesting activity is that everyone
will be recording the contacts as they make them.
They'll be using logging software to keep track
of their contacts. So this will give us data
in a couple of different forms. One is after
the contest, after the solar eclipse QSO party,
The participants will submit their logs to a
special website and we'll be able to extract
all their contact data, who contacted whom, how
far the contacts were, and of course what time
relative to the solar eclipse. The second thing
is there's always a lot of receiving stations
out there in the real world. They're called CW
skimmers or beacon receivers. There's a lot of
different names for them. But many of those receivers,
the data, the signals they receive and record
are aggregated on some very well -known sites
such as PSKreporter .info and the RBN, the Reverse
Beacon Network. And again, after these eclipses
pass over, the researchers will be able to extract
the data out of those sites as well, and again,
get the same kind of information. what contacts
were made over what distances, over what time
relative to the eclipses. And that'll give them
an idea of how the Sun affected the ionosphere
and how the ionosphere affected the propagation
of radio signals. So that's the filler clip.
Oh, yeah. So if people want to do their little
part and participate, into scientific research
or, you know, have an excuse to get on the radio.
How do they do that? What do they do? Yeah, it's
real simple. As Nathaniel said, you can go to
hamside .org and the first banner you see is
going to be for the upcoming conference. The
second one will be something called the festivals
of eclipse ionospheric science. And if you click
on that banner, it'll take you to a page. It'll
explain the rules. and some frequently asked
questions regarding the Solar Eclipse QSO party,
and also our second event, the Gladstone Signal
Spotting Challenge, which is something new for
this year. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about
that. The GSSE is something that's specific to
a mode that many people who are interested in
propagation will play with. It's called WSPR.
That's part of one of the Joe Taylor K1JT suite
of low signal to noise ratio modes. And also
there's some other similar modes called FST4W
and the like. But these are folks who either
one may set up very low power beacons and transmit
these whisper and FST4W signals, which are then
received by sites around the world and aggregated
into these databases. And there's others, most
of whom are ham, but some may also be short -wave
listeners, who will set up receiving stations
who will listen for whisper signals and FST4W
signals, and again send them to these aggregation
sites. So this is an opportunity for people who
don't necessarily want to make live person -to
-person contact, but who very much want to participate
in the generation of signals and reception of
signals and contribution to these large databases
that the researchers will eventually turn to
to try and figure out how the ionosphere reacted
during the eclipses. That's some pretty cool
stuff. Anything that we can use to measure what's
going on is always beneficial, I know. uh...
nathaniel's found some some very neat things
throughout his research and uh... it's just a
great opportunity for people to do that so so
yeah the reverse beacon network and the uh...
psk reporter takes care of you know a lot of
the digital and cw reception so so what about
sideband you just you cover that with the logs
exactly and the participants live with the main
source of data there And one other thing I'd
like to mention too, just to give a little background
and maybe an analogy to help people understand
why we think this research is so valuable. If
you look at terrestrial weather, you know, the
stuff that's happening outside your window, the
temperature, rainfall, precipitation, that sort
of thing. When I was a kid, 50 years ago, weather
predictions weren't all that accurate. They were
good maybe a day or two out, but beyond that
they were very, very suspect. But over the time,
through the collection of a lot of data and a
lot of research by the scientific community,
statisticians and whatnot, terrestrial weather
forecasting has improved tremendously, where
even in a place where I'm at, near Cleveland,
they can give pretty accurate 8 to 10 day forecasts.
There's no reason we can't expect the same thing
to happen with HF propagation forecasting. Today,
it's very statistics based. It's not the greatest
thing in the world. But if we do this kind of
research, collect this kind of data, and learn
about it and improve the models that we use to
help make these predictions, the thought is that
someday HF radio prediction will be as good as
terrestrial weather prediction, and that'll benefit
all hams and other users of the radio spectrum,
whether it's GPS operators or Starlink or whoever
it might be. So there's a lot of benefit to be
gained. very well put. Just a lot of stuff that
we can figure out from all this. So thank you
for your support in being the radio coordinator
for all this and making all this data available
for us geeks like Nathaniel to process and get
it. Uh, some kind of conclusion from it. So,
all right, well, we're going to finish up here.
Um, Nathaniel, you mentioned a couple of things,
uh, that will be at the, uh, uh, conference.
You've got a, a special event station and a test
session too. Right. We sure do. So I'm working
with the local amateur radio clubs and Murgos
amateur radio club, K3YTL. in Wilkes -Barre and
the Scranton Pocono Amateur Radio Club or SPARC
in the Scranton area. And they are helping us
out by putting together a special event station
that will be on the air for the whole workshop.
They'll be using the call sign W3USR, W3 University
of Scranton Radio. And then we will also have
a VE session Saturday afternoon. So we're really
trying to get the ham radio into this conference.
All right, and Gary any anything we left out
here on the on the kyusu parties No, I just take
a look at those pages especially hand side dot
org slash eclipse Again, we've got all the details
and a lot of background in case you're not familiar
with maybe whisper or some of these other modes
We've got some links that you can learn about
maybe you'll get excited And there's also going
to be some other events that maybe they're not
fully defined yet, but we've got some other opportunities.
Probably it'll pop up between now and the, and
the October timeframe. All right. Very good.
Well guys, thank you so much for being here.
I appreciate your time. I know you haven't been
on zoom enough today, so it's been great. Thank
you. So enjoy being part of the podcast. Thanks
for being here and taking some more time on Zoom
today. I think we've all had our Zoom fill for
the day. I think we've all spent all day on Zoom
pretty much, but that's cool that you're doing
that. So best of luck with the event and the
QSO parties and look forward to hearing the results.
And we have to have you back again, of course.
Thank you. Yes, we'll be back. All right. Well,
that is a wrap for this edition of HamTalk Live.
I'd like to thank my guests, Dr. Nathaniel Frisell,
W2NAF, and Gary McKeaton, AF8A, and everybody
out there in cyberspace for listening. And I
invite you all back next time. And to see our
upcoming guests, just go to hamtalklive .com.
So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying
7 -3, 7 -5, and may the good DX be yours. Cause
you sound just like a local up here But why don't
those whistling Mediterranean's Check it when
the rain could just clear