HamSCI 2023: Some first impressions

I’m on my way home from the HamSCI 2023 Conference, and while waiting in the airport, I thought I’d record some first impressions. As the date approached, I was feeling kind of reluctant about going. In fact, I almost didn’t go. In the end, though, I’m glad I did.

Impressions:

1. Scranton seems to be typical of a lot of East Coast and Midwest cities that enjoyed an industrial past, but are not as vibrant today as they once were. It’s in a beautiful spot, and the people are very nice, and I’d say that things will get better in the future.
2. Scranton is called The Electric City. This is partly due to their steel works’ early adoption electrical power and because they opened they opened what was was recognized as the first street car system in the country to run exclusively on electric power in 1886.
3. I stayed at the Radisson Lackawanna, which is a very cool hotel (see right). It used to be a train station for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad that ran from Hoboken, NJ to Buffalo, NY. From its construction, you can see how prosperous Scranton was at its peak. One of the unique features of this station/hotel are the 36 ceramic portrayals of scenes along the  railroad line. The first depicts the Hoboken ferry. The 36th depicts a resort near Buffalo.
4. This was a small, but mighty conference. There were lots of presentations because they used the academic format, which gives presenters only 20 minutes instead of the hour that’s usually given to presenters at ham radio conferences.
5. The focus was on ionospheric research, but there were topics of more general interest as well. For example, because the Doppler shift is of interest when describing the behavior of the ionosphere, there’s also an interest in accurately measuring signal frequencies.
6. There were lots of students, as you may expect. The median age was, therefore, much lower than at many ham gatherings.
7. The attendees were more diverse, too. There were many women and people of color present.

As a result of attending this conference, I’ve added a couple of things to my list of projects I’d like to do at some point. The first is connecting a GPS disciplined oscillator (GPSDO) to my IC-7610 in order to make my frequency measurements more accurate.The second is to play around with VLF reception and listen to some of the naturally-occuring phenomena that produce  RF signals, such as “whistlers.”