Tag Archives: Eclipse Propagation

Radio Waves: HEBA Antenna Approval, Eclipse Time Signal Shift, A Novice’s Guide to Amateur Radio Astronomy, and Voyager 1 Sending Data Again!

Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Alan, Dan, and Rich Cuff for the following tips:

WQVR(AM) Is Granted CP to Use HEBA Antenna at Night (Radio World)

Developer believes antenna’s smaller footprint can help reduce property needed for AM operators

The FCC in March granted an application for a construction permit filed by WQVR(AM) 940 in Webster, Mass., requesting licensed nighttime operation.

This is noteworthy because WQVR has been licensed to operate during daytime hours with a High-Efficiency Broadband Antenna or HEBA, developed by Worldwide Antenna Systems. [Continue reading…]

Global ‘time signals’ subtly shifted as the total solar eclipse reshaped Earth’s upper atmosphere, new data shows (Live Science)

During the historic April 8 total solar eclipse, a government radio station in Colorado started sending out slightly shifted “time signals” to millions of people across the globe as the moon’s shadow altered the upper layers of our atmosphere. However, these altered signals did not actually change the time. [Continue reading…]

Nathan Butts: A Novice’s Guide to Radio Astronomy (YouTube)

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth (NASA JPL)

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. Credit: NASA

After some inventive sleuthing, the mission team can — for the first time in five months — check the health and status of the most distant human-made object in existence.

For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago, the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

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RAC: Canadian Amateurs Invited to Participate in Solar Eclipse Project

Contribute to Eclipse Science and History: Research Propagation with Your Receiver!

March 5, 2024 –

The Case Amateur Radio Club W8EDU of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio is excited to invite Canadian Amateurs to participate in the upcoming CHU Eclipse Data Collection Project!

We will be monitoring the reception of the Canadian time standard CHU before, during, and after the eclipse to measure the recombination time of the ionosphere. In other words, we know that the ionosphere changes in response to the presence of UV radiation in the sun by ionizing during the day and ‘de-ionizing’ at night (which is why many frequency bands propagate differently during the day and the night).

We understand how the ionosphere changes over a normal 24-hour period in response to the relatively slow transition from daytime to night time, but want to learn more about how it changes over a much shorter period (which is what the eclipse provides). We want you to help!

Our goal is to study how the eclipse affects radio wave propagation, helping us understand the ionosphere’s recombination time. To achieve this, we need your help recording Canada’s time standard station CHU for two weeks surrounding the April 8th eclipse. Anyone with a KiwiSDR or a rig capable of interfacing with analysis/recording software like Fldigi is encouraged to join the effort!

This project has already garnered enthusiastic support from various communities, including the American Radio Relay League, the Radio Amateurs of Canada, and the Ham Radio Citizen Science Investigation HamSCI.

We have over 20 stations across the continent participating, from universities and high schools to representatives from the Radio Amateurs of Canada and even a station in Mexico!

To join us and contribute valuable data, simply visit our website and follow the instructions (https://w8edu.wordpress.com/chu-eclipse-data-collection/) to set up your station and notify us about your participation.

Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions or comments.

Adam Goodman W7OKE, President, Case Amateur Radio Club
David Kazdan AD8Y, MD, PhD, Faculty Advisor, Case Amateur Radio Club
Chistian Zorman, PhD, Faculty Advisor, Case Amateur Radio Club, Associate Dean for Research, Case School of Engineering

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2024 Eclipse: HamSCI Roundtable Events

The Solar Eclipse Is One Month Away!

Learn How You Can Participate in Two HamSCI Roundtable Events

The last total solar eclipse across North America for twenty years will occur on Monday, April 8th. Hams across North America are asked to participate in learning more about how the ionosphere functions by getting on the air to help scientists in a series of ionospheric experiments.

Connect with HamSCI members and curious hams on Wednesday, March 27 at 8PM (Eastern) / 5PM (Pacific)*, or that same day at 10PM (Eastern) / 7PM (Pacific)* for a Zoom presentation on HamSCI’s Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science (FoEIS). The presenters will take your questions during the 30-minute presentations.

The link to these presentations is here: https://scranton.zoom.us/j/286316405?pwd=QWdwMlFPbDlYeXg5ZDg1dmYzeFdCUT09#success

The program will start by covering HamSCI’s basis and purpose, quickly moving into why we are conducting experiments, how hams and SWLS can participate, and what we hope to learn from the event. Along the way, we will discuss why the science behind the events is important to users of the high frequency radio spectrum – including amateur radio operators!

Learn about the HamSCI’s eclipse-focused operating events:

Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP)

Gladstone Signal Spotting Challenge (GSSC)

Medium Wave Recording Event

Time Delay of Arrival (TDOA) Event

Grape 1 Doppler Receiver project

…and more!

There is no need to pre-register, create an account or log into any site. Simply follow this link at the date and times above to be taken to a Zoom meeting room, hosted by HamSCI: HamSCI FoEIS Roundtable Zoom Link

Join us on March 27th!! Get on the air April 8th!!

HamSCI serves as a means for fostering collaboration between professional researchers and amateur radio operators. It assists in developing and maintaining standards and agreements between all people and organizations involved. Its goals are to advance scientific research and understanding through amateur radio activities and encourage the development of new technologies to support this research.

For more information about HamSCI, to join our mailing list, or participate in our work, please visit us at www.hamsci.org.

###

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Radio Waves: Eclipses and Radio Waves, Radio World’s Letters, Eifel Radio Days Special, and AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act

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Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Andrea Borgnino, Dennis Dura, ______ for the following tips:

Eclipses do odd things to radio waves. An army of amateur broadcasters wants to find out why (BBC Future)

It’s the huge tower in his back yard that gives Todd Baker’s hobby away. Bristling with antennae, the 30m (100ft) structure is taller than many of the mature trees nearby. Baker, an industrial conveyor belt salesman from Indiana, goes not just by his name, but also his call-sign, the short sequence of letters and numbers that he uses to identify himself over the air: W1TOD. He is a member of the amateur radio, or ham radio, community.

“You name it, I’ve been in it,” he says, referring to different radio systems, including citizens band, or CB radio, that he has dabbled with over the years. “Communications were just plain-o cool to me.”

Now, he dabbles in celestial citizen science, too. On 14 October, he and hundreds of other amateur radio enthusiasts will deliberately fill the airwaves during an annular solar eclipse, as it crosses the Americas. They’ll do it again next April, when a full solar eclipse becomes visible from Newfoundland to Mexico.

Why? Solar eclipses are known to affect radio transmissions, and Baker is planning to take part in a giant experiment designed to monitor how cosmic events affect radio broadcasts. [Continue reading…]

Letters: AM’s Future, Shortwave’s Past and More (Radio World)

[…]Shortwave radios don’t tell tales
Several points of interest regarding shortwave broadcasting. Although I have been retired from Voice of America as a Foreign Service Officer and field engineer for over a decade, several points are still worth noting.

In my experience of living and working around the world for 20 years, most radios sold overseas are a combination AM/FM and shortwave. So there are radios available to the general public.

Second is the beauty of shortwave. Broadcast can be sent over large distances and be highly effective at reaching the desired audience. AM broadcasting can only reach a smaller listener area and without extremely high power must be in rather close proximity to the intended audience. FM broadcasting has even greater limitations in respect to closeness to the intended listener.

As we have adopted new technology such as the global internet, we don’t seem to have a grasp of its inherent limitations. I witnessed this firsthand in the Middle East where websites or information deemed inappropriate are easily blocked or deleted from a country’s internet stream. Proxy servers and other VPN methods do little for the individuals striving for freedom of information. Information regarding using and searching for these services is easily gathered by internet service providers and can be used to intimidate or prosecute.

Shortwave radios don’t tell tales. Frequency memories can be deleted easily, and there is no way to tell what broadcast were being listened to, especially on analog scale radios.

We need to reevaluate our strategic thinking and remember that shortwave works effectively and has for many years. People around the world have relied on SW broadcast for years as a source of reliable news and information that their host countries did not want them to hear.

— Walter Konetsco

[Click here to read the entire article with other reader letters to the editor…]

Eifel Radio Days Anniversary Broadcast

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Gérard Koopal, who shares the following announcement:

On October 29, 1923, the first “entertainment broadcast” broadcast went on air in the Vox House in Berlin. The first regular radio broadcasts began.

The Eifel Radio Days will celebrate this unique anniversary from October 27th to 30th, 2023.
Of course again live and in mono from the studio in the former alternative headquarters of the NRW state government.

facebook.com/EifelerRadiotage
twitter.com/EifelerRadioTag

https://www.eifeler-radiotage.de/[email protected]

Gérard Koopal

S. 1669, AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2023 (Congressional Budget Office)

S. 1669 would direct the Department of Transportation (DOT) to issue a rule requiring that AM broadcast stations be accessible in all passenger motor vehicles manufactured in, imported into, or shipped within the United States. (Passenger motor vehicles are those designed to primarily carry their operator and up to 12 passengers; the definition does not include motorcycles.) The bill would require DOT to issue the rule within one year of enactment and to report to the Congress at least every five years on the rule’s effects.

Additionally, S. 1669 would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study the role AM broadcasts in passenger vehicles play in disseminating emergency alerts through the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. That study would need to be completed within 18 months of enactment.

Using information on the cost of issuing similar rules and studies, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would cost DOT and GAO a total of $1 million over the 2024-2028 period. Any spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

Additionally, S. 1669 would authorize DOT to assess civil penalties on manufacturers that fail to comply with the new rule; such penalties are recorded as revenues. CBO estimates that any additional revenues collected would total less than $500,000 over the 2024-2033 period because the number of violations would probably be small.

Click here to download the full report.

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Radio Waves: RIP Phil Erwin, Federal Watchdog Targets Pack, Eclipse Festival of Frequency Measurement, and VOA testing DRM

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Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers. To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Dave Zantow, Michael Guerin, Eric McFadden, and Dan Robinson for the following tips:

The voice of Phil Irwin will be greatly missed (Rappahannock News)

Where wasn’t the presence of Phil Irwin felt in Rappahannock County?

A constant of virtually all proceedings of the Rappahannock County community and government, cherished innkeeper of Caledonia Farm – 1812, founding member of the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection, regional director of the Virginia Farm Bureau, committee member for both Rappahannock County Farmland Preservation and the Agricultural Forestal District, Rappahannock tourism advisory member — for 25 years chief of morning broadcasts for Voice of America (VOA) — Irwin was found dead Thursday at his working cattle farm north of Washington.

“What a contribution Phil made to our county over his many years here,” Huntly friend Ralph Bates reacted upon learning of Irwin’s death. “He will live in our memories as we drive and see how well our viewshed and environment has been protected because of his commitment and work.”

Former Washington Mayor John Fox Sullivan recalled “a good man and such a part of the Rappahannock fabric. His love for this county, and commitment to it, was unmatched.”[…]

Federal watchdog finds ‘substantial likelihood of wrongdoing’ by Trump appointees overseeing Voice of America (NBC News)

The federal watchdog’s findings mark the latest rebuke of the Trump-appointed CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Michael Pack.

WASHINGTON — A federal watchdog agency has found “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” by Trump administration appointees who oversee the Voice of America and other U.S.-funded media outlets.

The finding from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent government agency charged with safeguarding federal employees’ rights, marks the latest rebuke of Michael Pack, who President Donald Trump appointed to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent agency to VOA and other broadcasters.

A federal judge last month ordered Pack to stop interfering in the newsrooms of VOA and other media outlets and found that he had jeopardized the First Amendment rights of journalists that his office had targeted for investigation. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and press freedom groups have blasted Pack over his actions since he took over in June, accusing him of undermining the broadcasters’ editorial independence and defying congressional authority.

After reviewing allegations from current and recent employees, the Office of Special Counsel wrote to the whistleblowers Wednesday saying it had demanded Pack and the U.S. Agency for Global Media conduct an investigation into the allegations.[…]

The December 2020 Eclipse Festival of Frequency Measurement (HamSCI)

Changes in ionospheric electron density caused by space weather and diurnal solar changes are known to cause Doppler shifts on HF ray paths. For example, see Figure 7 in Boitman et al., 1999. HamSCI’s first attempt at a measurement of these Doppler shifts was during the August 2017 total solar eclipse. We plan a careful measurement during the 2024 eclipse. As part of the WWV centennial, 50 stations collected Doppler shift data for the original Festival of Frequency Measurement, demonstrating the value of volunteer participation in collecting this data. During the June 2020 Eclipse Festival, we enlisted participants around the globe and experimented with different data collection protocols. This winter, we request that all amateur radio stations, shortwave listeners, and others capable of making high-quality HF frequency measurements help us collect frequency data for the December 14 total eclipse.[…]

USAGM, VOA Testing Innovative Digital Radio Platform (Inside VOA)

A few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the world, broadcast engineers in Greenville, North Carolina, launched a test of digital radio signals. The U.S. Agency for Global Media began aiming a digital broadcast at Cuba and Latin America, which included Office of Cuba Broadcasting and Voice of America content.

With this 2020 test, VOA embarked on a new phase of global innovation on a platform called Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), a versatile digital signal not well known in the U.S., but the only one that can cover the entire spectrum: shortwave, mediumwave and longwave, as well as VHF (FM). As digital radio emerged in the 1990s, VOA was among the first broadcasters testing a signal that promised to even out shortwave radio signals that often faded in and out and were marred by static.

VOA tested the DRM signal in the 1990s at the agency’s Morocco transmitter site, one of five facilities opened in a period of expansion in the previous decade. However, other digital signals became the standard in various markets around the world. The U.S. standard audio digital platform is called HD.

Around the world, as other digital radio platforms were adopted, DRM was held back by the marketplace. Nobody was making commercially available receivers.

By the end of the 1990s, VOA innovation focused more on television, the platform that promised larger audiences, even in some places in the world where shortwave dominated. By the early 2010s, the rallying cry became “Digital First,” as VOA strived to attract readers for its language service websites and began tapping into the growing audiences on new social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

By 2020, however, DRM had come full circle.

“You’re no longer limited to just reading the news or playing music,” says Gerhard Straub, supervisory director of the USAGM Broadcast Technologies Division.

Straub, along with Gary Koster, Broadcast Radio Technician and transmitter expert and Macon Dail, Chief Engineer at the Greenville Transmitting Station, set up the test broadcast in February of this year, not long before the COVID-19 pandemic grounded global travel. The trio put up a DRM signal with Radio Marti and VOA audio along with scrolling text messages and rotating images.

Engineers have received reports of a clear signal as far south as Brazil.

The USAGM test, says Straub, is “coasting along” in the pandemic, but additional content will be added when technicians can travel again. Straub says the VOA signal was taken off in the initial test to concentrate on the OCB digital content and to keep the signal robust. Now that there is good reception data, he noted, the digital bit rate can be increased and VOA content added back into the test in 2021.

Because DRM operates at lower power, more radio stations and digital signals can be broadcast on a single transmitter. The platform is starting to grow in countries of interest to Western international broadcasters. DRM signals will soon cover all of China, though its government is expected to attempt to control the stations accessed by its citizens. India built 39 transmitters and, more importantly, 2.5 million vehicles already are equipped with DRM radios. Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil and North Korea all have nascent DRM operations.

Religious broadcasters, who sometimes target audiences similar to those sought by Western governments, are experimenting with the technology. For example, a missionary group, TWR.org, sent the Bible’s Gospel of Mark from Guam to Cambodia via DRM shortwave.

“You have to stop thinking of it as radio, because it’s not,” says USAGM’s Straub. “We are now broadcasting digital data. Just like we broadcast digital data on the internet, we can broadcast digital data over shortwave without being hampered by an internet firewall that maybe limits what we can send to a particular country.”

Reason enough, Straub believes, for VOA to continue leading innovation in a new-again technology.[…]

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AM Radio: Ivan compiles 2017 solar eclipse logs

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ivan Cholakov (NO2CW), who writes:

I never got a chance to summarize my results of the AM scans I did during the 2017 total eclipse.

I used an SDR and a 40 foot end-fed antenna located in a park near the Nashville, TN airport.

On the plus side I did notice a spike of AM signals and amateur radio signals especially on 40 meters. On the negative side, my AM scans were adversely affected by the nearby powerhouse WSM transmitter on 650 kHz.

I’ve attached my results in a spreadsheet [embedded] below.

Click here to view this Google Docs spreadsheet in a new window.

Fantastic, Ivan! Thank you for taking the time to go through your recordings and make these notes. No doubt, this log took a few hours to compile. I’ve yet to go through my eclipse spectrum recordings–!

Again, thanks for sharing!

Click here to view Ivan’s previous post which includes a bandscan of the 2017 Eclipse QSO Party.

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Video: Ivan shares a bandscan from the 2017 Eclipse QSO Party

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ivan Cholakov (NO2CW) who shares the following:

I finally got around to listening through some of the amateur radio band spectrum captures from the 2017 Solar Eclipse QSO party. I used an SDRPlay receiver with an end fed LNR antenna in portable field setting in Nashville, TN.

About 30 minutes of solar eclipse contacts and chatter:

Click here to view on YouTube.

Thank you, Ivan, for taking the time to put this video together and sharing it. The RSP did a fantastic job capturing this spectrum–I do love the SDRuno application for reviewing spectrum recordings as well. Cheers!

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