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Good evening, everyone. It's time for HamTalk
Live. It's episode number 184, the HamSci WWV
Festival of Frequency Measurements, recorded
live on Thursday, October 3rd, 2019. I'm your
host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in
to this episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're
joined by Dr. Nathaniel Frisell, W2NAF. and we'll
take your calls live in just a few minutes. Last
week, Joe Karsha, NJ1Q, and Michelle Patnode,
W3MVP, were here to talk about the So Now What
podcast from ARRL. And if you missed the show,
you can listen anytime over at hamptalklive .com
or on your favorite podcast app. or on YouTube,
or you can catch the rebroadcast on WTWW, that's
5085 AM Saturday mornings or Saturday evenings
rather, at about 630 PM Eastern Time. Before
we take a break here. Hey, don't forget about
fallout. It's the 100 watts of the wire podcast
fallout. That's October 11th through the 13th
and Christian K zero STH is encouraging everyone
to get outdoors and enjoy some radio before the
chill arrives here in the US. And while it's
not a contest, there are some prizes and points.
So go over to 100watsandawire .com slash activities
and check out all the information there on Fallout.
Get outside next weekend and participate. So
I'll be back with Nathaniel right after this
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fractions. Now, here's Neil Rapp with more HamTalk
Live. Thanks to ICOM for bringing HamTalk Live
your way. Be sure to check them out at icomamerica
.com slash amateur. Our guest tonight is Dr.
Nathaniel Frisell, W2NAF. He is now an assistant
professor at the University of Scranton in physics,
where he teaches digital signal processing. fundamental
physics and electromagnetics. 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. Nathaniel
completed his PhD in electrical engineering in
spring 2016 at the Superdarn HF Radar Laboratory
at Virginia Tech. He was also involved in the
Virginia Tech Amateur Radio Association, where
he coordinated the VE team. And his interests
include HF, CW, HF propagation, and radio scouting,
including involvement at the W2FSR station at
Forestburg Scout Reservation in New York, as
well as working on the K2BSA staff at the National
Scout Jamboree. And so, Nathaniel, welcome back.
Thank you so much, Neil. It's a pleasure to be
here. Well, it's always good to have you back
here and last time I think was for your big award
so congratulations again on on being the ham
vincen amateur of the year and I really like
this and before the show we were already talking
all this science stuff uh... the science geeks
were you know we gotta ask all these all these
technical science questions and so we weren't
going to bore everybody with those on the show
here tonight but uh... we're already talking
about this uh... this new project but and we'll
talk about that here in just a second but but
first how's the the move going you you were in
g i t and now uh... you just started the new
gig over at Scranton and you're back to teaching.
You're back in the classroom again trying to
balance the workload between the classroom and
your research. So how's it all going? That's
right, Neil. I think things are going fine. So
I'm teaching a couple lectures and a couple of
labs this semester and I have a few undergraduate
research students working with me as well. One
of them I was able to bring to the Tapper Digital
Communications Conference last week and another
one is working on a project that we're going
to send some HF radio receivers down to Antarctica
again and that's through a collaboration with
MJIT. So I think things are coming along just
fine. Over. All right, very good. Well, you know,
it's it's always a challenge and I was sharing
with you before the show, you know, some of the
things that happened in the classroom like 311
,000 percent error, you know that there might
be something wrong there. There might be And
I'm learning that too now as I'm teaching a physics
one class You know some of the students are are
really quite bright You just give an exam and
we had a few students just you know walk away
with perfect Perfect exams and other students
they struggle a little bit more But hopefully
they'll all get to where they need to be by the
end if they figure out f equals ma then Life
is good That's right And that vector math, you
know the vector and vectors. Yes, I told them
I like so much of this class is just knowing
how to manipulate vectors properly Yeah, I brought
up the the V word in class the other day we're
talking about Polarity and molecules and I was
like, yeah, you can, you can figure out the resultant
dipole and they're like, Oh no, not that word
again. Well, let's talk about this WWV. I love
the name. It's the, the festival of frequency
measurements. It just, it just has a ring to
it. So tell us about what it is and who's participating
and what you hope to learn out of this. Sure.
Neil. So the WWV centennial festival of frequency
measurements is a science activity that goes
along with WWV's 100th anniversary celebrations.
And the idea of doing the festival frequency
measurements, both the name and the idea for
doing this particular experiment, really came
from David Kasdan, Alpha Delta 8 Yankee, at the
Case Western Reserve University Case Amateur
Radio Club, W8EDU. So both he and his students
have really been leading the charge in making
sure this happens. asks participants to do is
to measure the Doppler shift at their station
of the 5 MHz frequency. And when you do that,
you'll find out that even though WWV has a very,
very stable and accurate 5 MHz carrier, what
you actually receive in your own backyard is
not stable and not right at 5 MHz. There's a
substantial amount of frequency shift to be seen.
And that frequency shift can very often be attributed
to variations occurring in the ionosphere. Very
good. So how do you go about taking all these
measurements and crowdsourcing them? So there
is a frequency measurement experiment page on
HamSci .org. If you go to HamSci .org there's
a news or blog post up right now about this and
then there's a link to a procedure page and on
the procedure page it explains how you're going
to set up your equipment and what you're going
to measure. Some of the important things here
is you can use almost any receiver, but you do
have to have some sort of very stable oscillator
to measure against. And one popular choice these
days are GPS -disciplined oscillators, which
actually synchronize with the GPS network of
satellites and they can use that to steer or
discipline a local oscillator and you can get
a very stable local oscillator almost to the
caliber of being a piece of test equipment and
then you can feed that into your radio and you
can use that to compare that signal with the
one coming in from WWV and that can allow you
to record the Doppler shift measurements. You
often use a program, there's a program called
Spectrum Lab. You can either use that or even
the frequency measurement utility within FL Digi.
Those are both ways that you can record the data
to the computer and then you're going to want
to upload those observations to a data repository
site called Zenodo where we have a HamSci community
page. So you're gonna gather all this data on
the Doppler shift and what are you what are you
hoping to find from this? Well, we're really
hoping to learn about new ionospheric dynamics
that maybe we don't know about or maybe we know
about but don't understand and There's a whole
zoo of different things out there different phenomena
Things such as traveling on a spirit disturbances
You can see changes due to the sunrise and sunset,
other things as well. Some of these things I
mentioned, like traveling atmospheric disturbances,
that's a very generic term. There's a lot of
things that can cause them. So not all the traveling
atmospheric disturbances are the same. So by
looking at these measurements, we might be able
to learn something new. Okay, so have you I mean
it's just happened in what two days now right
since yeah, it's the anniversary of WWV which
we were fortunate enough to have a couple of
those guys from the special event station on
here a couple of weeks ago, but Have you been
able to gather anything out of the dated already?
Yes, so we have so far and that's really thanks
to some very good volunteers that we have participating
So on the Zenodo website, and again, you can
get to a link to that from hamsci .org, on the
Zenodo repository, we have about 40 submissions
from many different places, many different operators
providing data. And some of them have even presented
their data in a presentation form. So one very
nice presentation comes from an amateur Steve
Sirwin, whiskey off a five, foxtrot, Romeo foxtrot,
and he lives in San Antonio, Texas, so he's measuring
the path between Fort Collins, Colorado, where
WWV is, to his station in San Antonio, Texas,
and he has absolutely beautiful figures which
show the Doppler shift changes at dusk and dawn,
and it shows that you see very few changes. in
the five megahertz signal during the day. But
if you look at night, you do have quite prominent,
quite a bit of ionospheric variability there,
which looks like traveling ionospheric disturbances.
I'm looking at the figure now. It looks like
there's about a, it's about one hertz peak to
peak Doppler shift on the signal. Yeah, I took
a real quick glance at it right before the show
and and it was it was pretty pronounced So yeah,
I mean this is hot you're on to something here.
Yeah, this is hot off the press really I mean
Steve just sent this this morning just posted
it on Zenodo today and yeah, anyone who goes
to the Hamside Oregon is a nodo and searches
for Whiskey Alpha -5, Foxtrot, Romeo, Foxtrot,
WA -5, FRF, and there's a Noto repository. They'll
be able to see his PowerPoint, or the PDF of
his PowerPoint there, and it's very clear the
difference between day and night. It's as clear
as day and night, really. Yeah, it's very pronounced.
You're getting some good stuff. Yeah, so a couple
things I want to point out about this is, first
of all, As much as we do know about the ionosphere
and space, there's so much that we still do not
know and we haven't been able to really observe
well. This is a great case of this because I
showed these slides to my friend Dr. Phil Erickson,
WNPJE, who's up at the MIT Haystack Observatory.
I'm like, Phil, have you seen these types of
oscillations or variability? at nighttime, do
you know what this is from? And he said, you
know, Nathaniel, no, I really don't. And if you
do a Google Scholar search for nighttime MSTIDs,
you'll see a lot of optical observations, airglow
observations. But these five megahertz HF observations,
you know, they're really kind of unique. I don't
think they have been studied very much professionally.
So this is something you know, that's a real
contribution we can have to professional science.
And that's, you know, being a science teacher
and having a degree, you know, in chemistry,
that's always been a connection for me is, you
know, the ham radio aspects of science. And this
brings them together and it's just It's just
really exciting to hear that this is happening
in mass quantities. Yeah, it's really very exciting.
Well, you've done an excellent job of putting
this stuff together and just look forward to
hearing more about this and some of the plans
that you have for the future. And now I understand
you've got a a grant for a lot of this. Yeah,
so it hasn't quite started yet actually, even
though we've done so much. So these types of
observations that people are making with the
receivers and the GPS discipline oscillators
that they already have, we're trying to develop
a personal space weather station device that
can basically standardize these types of measurements.
We'd like to create a device that is built, designed
from the ground up to address some of the scientific
needs that a typical radio setup wouldn't have.
Like it's going to have a high quality oscillator
in it that's going to, GPS disciplined oscillator
in it. It's going to have the ability to do time
stamping. It's going to have the ability to measure
multiple things at the same time and We would
like to build this and be able to distribute
it either distribute it or make it available
to amateur radio operators really all over the
world eventually and create a network that can
very consistently make Measurements like the
ones you're seeing from this WWE festival frequency
measurement But we want to you know have them
be more standardized and more carefully measured.
So we just won a large NSF grant, $1 .3 million.
It's a collaborative grant shared among a few
different institutions. That's going to provide
some funding to help develop a prototype for
this particular personal space weather station.
And one of the things that you learn in science
is Sometimes, it all comes down to the funding.
Congratulations on that. Well, you know, it certainly
helps. Thank you. I mean, it helps on so many
different levels because, really, we've been
doing a lot of these projects on a volunteer
basis. We have many volunteers who've been helping.
But now that we have funding, it can accelerate
the process. Even here at the university, the
fact that I have funding actually gives me more
time. And more justification to spend my time
working on this project rather than some of the
other responsibilities I might have so it really
allows people to redirect their time to work
on these things and and make it come together
I Think something Yeah, and one thing I'm very
excited about is the Collaborative nature of
this so I've been working with the Tapper group.
They're doing a lot of the engineering work on
this project and that's where I was able to connect
with a lot of the people who are working on this
project. And so the TAPR portion of the project,
they're calling it the Tangerine SDR, Software
Defined Radio, and it's actually, the Tangerine
SDR is going to be, you know, certainly to support
the personal space weather station, but it's
going to be modular so it can support other applications
as well. We meet every Monday night at 9 p .m.
Eastern on the internet on a team speak session
and we have a list serve and that's where we're
able to do a lot of our collaborative development.
And then we meet twice a year once at the Tapper
Digital Communications Conference which just
happened in Detroit last weekend. And then again
at the HamSci workshop which is going to happen
in Scranton this March 20th and 21st. to continue
the development of this project. Oh, that sounds
like a fabulous project and glad to hear that
the funding is there and the volunteers are there
and it's all coming together. So congratulations
once again. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're
going to come back. We're going to talk to Nathaniel
some more. And we're going to give you a chance
to ask your questions. So be sure to give us
a call. That telephone number to call again is
812 -638 -4261. It's 812 -NET -HAM -1. And we'll
take your calls when we come back after this
word. from Tower Electronics right here on HamTalk
Live. I'm not so sure why I ever used any other
PL259s. Mine are better. Besides, you deserve
the best. You know I love you. If a man says
something in the woods and there are no women
there, is he still wrong? You're listening to
HamTalk Live with Neil Rapp. Thanks as always
to Tower Electronics for bringing HamTalk live
your way each and every week. Their HamFest schedule
this weekend, it's actually tomorrow and Saturday
in Belton, Texas. And then Chickasaw, Alabama,
October 12th. And October 19th, Greenville, Tennessee.
But you can visit them anytime, anywhere at PL
-259 .com. At HamTalk Live, you can visit us
anytime, anywhere at HamTalkLive .com or live
every Thursday night at 9 p .m. at HamTalkLive
.com. And be sure to check us out on Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram. And it's time now for
your calls. So if you have a question for Nathaniel,
please give us a call at 812 -638 -4261. It's
812 -NET -HAM -1. Or you can tweet us. It's at
HamTalk Live. And if you're listening to us on
WTWW or on the podcast version, we're not here.
It's Thursday night, so we're not here. Sorry
that we won't be able to take your questions
live on the show, but we can always fit those
questions in offline here as well. So we're going
to talk a little bit about the next big project,
but first let me run over here to Twitter. Brett
caught my my near mistake and and he knows that
I've caught on to this That at the beginning
I almost said a hundred wires and a watt instead
of a hundred watts and a wire so Brett caught
that so I know somebody's listening so Very good
eight one two six three eight four two six one
is the number so let's talk a little bit about
some future plans and and i guess first would
be this hamsai conference that you've got coming
up and and amazingly it's at the university of
scranton that's right we're planning the 2020
hamsai workshop at the university of scranton
and the plan is to have it march 20th and march
21st and this is an opportunity to come uh meet
fellow ham radio science enthusiasts and professional
academic researchers. And we all come together
and we present the research that we've been doing
and talk about how we can further both science
and amateur radio together. And it's a really,
really great couple days. So we've run the workshop
twice so far. We had it once at NJIT. That was
the first year. And then last year Case Western
Reserve hosted it. And so this year it will be
at the University of Scranton. All right, and
that's you know, anybody can go to that right?
That's right. Yes, anyone can go. So we're still
working on getting the details Set up that will
be posted on Ham side at work probably in about
a month or so So we still have to get some of
the final details but typically it costs about
a hundred seventy five dollars or so and that
includes all of the food, so that's We still
have to confirm all those details for this year,
but that's how we've been able to run it in the
past. And last year we had some very good speakers.
We had Ward Silver, N0AX is the keynote speaker.
And for the two invited tutorials, we had Carl
Letzelswab, K9LA, who's a well -known propagation
columnist. Dr. Larissa Gondrenko from the MIT
Haystack Observatory Well some great People there
and some great topics so if you get a chance
head on over to the University of Scranton in
March and and check out the third Hamseye workshop
Well, what else have you got coming up here?
Are you coming up with some more of these? Great
ideas for studies? Oh, well, let me tell you.
I mean, just working on the personal space weather
station right now is taking that is a very multifaceted
project in and of itself. So we have people working
on the Tangerine SDR. That's going to be the
higher end version of the personal space weather
station. We're going to have a lower cost version.
So there's design that needs to go into that.
We're going to have part of the device use ground
magnetometers, so there's science that needs
to go into that. So just this one project is
really quite diverse. And even the festival of
frequencies that we're having right now, those
observations are going to help give us ideas
and data starting point for the designs for this
personal space weather station as well. So that
is part of it. But some other things, I guess
some other things I have personally going on
with the hamsi type activities is I'm working
on a paper that looks at large -scale traveling
ionospheric disturbances that you can see in
both reverse speaking network and a whisper network
data. and i'm planning on presenting that at
the american geophysical union meeting this coming
december so i'll be there and a few other hamside
people be there as well and um... and i'm also
planning on going to the american meteorological
society meeting in january so there's there's
quite a bit of activity going on eight one two
six three eight four two six one is the phone
number if you have a question for Dr. Nathaniel
Frisell, W -2 -N -A -F about HamSci and the WWV
Anniversary Festival of Frequency Measurement.
So, and if you're listening to this... WWV, all
the time, all the time. And you measured... the
Doppler shift. Make sure you send in your data
and get it collected. Well, let's see. We do
have a question here coming in from Brett, wy7bg.
What will the ionospheric researchers be doing
during the upcoming eclipse? Well, they are going
to be trying to repeat some of the same sorts
of experiments that happened in the last eclipse,
and you might say, well, why would you do that?
Well, the path of the upcoming eclipse is rather
different from the path of the previous eclipse.
The 2024 eclipse is going to be much more of
a north -south direction, whereas the 2017 eclipse
was from west to east, and so there's actually,
because of Because the ionosphere is structured
based on the Earth's magnetic field, you can
expect to see some different behavior between
those two situations. So they'll be investigating
some science questions related to that, I'm sure.
And if I don't move, the center of that viewing
area is like three miles from my backyard. Wow,
are you lucky so yeah the last time we were like,
oh, we're in the wrong place And then it's like
well wait wait next time is better. So just have
to wait around long enough, right? Yeah. Yeah.
No, I don't know if I can wait around long enough,
but Maybe we'll come back and visit but Maybe
we can rent out the backyard as an observatory
or something. I don't know But yeah, there should
be some good things and of course, you know But
repeating this is always kind of necessary to
make sure that, you know, there's not something
wrong with the data. That's right. And, you know,
we're looking to confirm things, you know, like
waves that are generated by eclipses, waves in
the ionosphere. with altitude, those are some
of the things people will be looking at. There
are people who look at VLF propagation and how
that changes due to an eclipse. So there's a
lot of different ways to look at the eclipse.
Well, that's coming up, so we'll have to hang
on for that one a little while longer, but the
preparation begins now, so that's good. It does.
812 -638 -4261. Let's give one last call here
for some questions for Dr. Nathaniel Frisell,
W2NAF from HamSci. What else is HamSci up to
besides the WWV thing and the upcoming conference?
So besides that and the personal space weather
station, Well, we're always looking for people
who are doing science sorts of activities with
ham radio. We're looking for them to contribute
There's a lot of interest in the NVIS type propagation
near vertical incidence skywave And this is of
particular interest to people who are doing public
service emergency communications and defense
applications because it allows you to set up
regional communications with modest antennas.
And so that's a very hot topic of research. Some
of the people at, some of the researchers at
West Point are actually very interested in this,
and they were able to come to both the HamSci
workshop and the Tapper DCC and present on that
sort of work. So I know that's going to be a
continuing topic near Vertical Instance SkyWave
and VIS. Very good. Well, all kinds of cool stuff
going on, and it's HamSci .org, H -A -M -S -C
-I .org. Be sure to check that out. watch what's
happening because Nathaniel and his cohorts are
putting together some marvelous science tied
in with ham radio. So Nathaniel, again, congratulations
on the new job, on the big award and another
interesting measurement of the ionosphere and
we look forward to hearing more as you have a
chance to dig into the data and find a few more
things I suspect. Yes thank you so much Neil.
All right well anything else we need to we need
to tell the listeners before we go here? I think
that's it just keep operating and You know, be
curious. I hope to see some of you come to the
Hampstead workshop in 2020 at the University
of Scranton. I will very much enjoy meeting you.
And the more you operate, the more research you
can do. That's right. If the signals aren't there,
you can't measure them. So that's right. You
got to have them out there. So get on the air
and next weekend, Get outside if you can and
participate in the Fallout activity. There's
another activity for you to get on the air with,
so don't forget about that. Well, that is a wrap
for this week's edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks
again to my guest, Dr. Nathaniel Forssell, W2NAF,
and everybody in cyberspace for listening and
typing in tonight. Come back next Thursday night
at 9 p .m. Eastern Time and we'll have another
guest. We're working on a kind of big one. So
we'll see if it's next week or the week after.
But we've got a big one coming on here pretty
soon. So check out HamTalkLive .com for a list
of all of our upcoming guests. And if you like
HamTalk Live, please consider leaving us a review
on iTunes or wherever you live. listen, it helps
others find us faster. So for now, this is Neil
Rapp, WB9VPG, saying seven three, seven five,
and may the good DX be yours.