In this episode, I join Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. We discussed the following:PRESENTER OPINION : The ARRL elections this year are a sham?
Russia and Belarus eligible again for the CQ WW Contest Awards
The feature for this episode is the first part of the ICQ Podcast’s report on the UK Ham Fest 2024.
In this episode, I joined Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT and Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and we discussed:This episode’s feature covers the latest ICQPodcast Live session.
In this episode, I join Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss:This episode’s feature is more information about HamSCI’s activities during the upcoming full solar eclipse.
The last total solar eclipse across North America for twenty years will occur on Monday, April 8. HamSCI is asking hams across North America to participate in learning more about how the ionosphere functions by getting on the air to help scientists in a series of ionospheric experiments.There is no need to pre-register, create an account or log into any site. Simply go to the HamSCI FoEIS Roundtable Zoom meeting room on March 27th!! Then, get on the air April 8th!!
In this episode, I join Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, and Edmund Spicer M0MNG to discuss the following:
This episode’s feature is GB0ROC Bunkers on the Air Station.
$70,000 Upgrade Coming To Skywarn Ham Systems In The OzarksAlmost $70,000 are on the way to expand and upgrade the Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn Ham Radio Repeater System. The 49-repeater group, which includes KRMS Radio and TV, serves as a system which provides ground-level eye-witness updates to the National Weather Service in Springfield stretching from Lake of the Ozarks to Branson and from Lebanon to Joplin. Funding from the Amateur Radio Digital Communications will pass through the Southern Missouri Emergency Communications Fund to provide for the upgrades. The project is expected to take about 10 months to complete.
[DELAWARE] Ham radio, also known as amateur radio, has been around for more than 100 years. While it started as a way regular citizens could experiment with Morse code communication, it soon became wireless voice communication. With modern technologies such as cell phones and the internet, it would seem there is no need for radio communication. But ask any one of the almost 2,000 FCC-licensed ham radio operators in Delaware, and they will say it’s more than a thing. For many, it is a part of every day.
The month of October has been especially busy for ham radio. On Saturday, Oct. 7, a group of “hams” from the Nanticoke Amateur Radio Club set up their equipment at Redden State Forest just south of Georgetown. The purpose of the event was to give the operators experience in setting up an operational field station completely off the grid. They then spent several hours in “Parks On The Air” (POTA) conversation with other hams, many of whom were located in a variety of parks and public lands around the globe. The parks communication has become very popular, organizers said, and many operators can be found in a park using either Morse code or voice mode to make as many contacts as they can around the world
On 14 October, millions of people in North, Central, and South America peered through safety glasses and other viewing aids at the partially obscured Sun. Simultaneously, thousands of folks experienced the annular solar eclipse in a different way: through transmissions sent and received over amateur radios.
Before, during, and after the eclipse, ham radio operators pinged signals off the ionosphere and connected to people hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. The experiment, part of the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI), is gathering hundreds of thousands of those contacts to investigate how the ionosphere responds to the temporary loss of sunlight during an eclipse.
“This is our way of remote sensing the ionosphere,” said Nathaniel Frissell (call sign W2NAF), a space physicist and electrical engineer at the University of Scranton (W3USR) in Pennsylvania and the lead HamSCI organizer. “People have been doing this for about 100 years, and it’s gamified,” he said. “We used this idea to create a ham radio contest that would actually be a scientific experiment.”
Eclipses do odd things to radio waves. An army of amateur broadcasters wants to find out whyIt’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.
Local ham radio group trains to support hospital system during cyber attack[PORTAGE COUNTY, WI] A cyber terrorist has taken control of the nation’s healthcare system. Communications are down, bringing hospital and medical operations to a grinding halt. Enter Portage County’s ham radio group, Portage County ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) group.
Nicholas Proulx and Phil Schobert, both members of the group, spent Saturday morning participating in the simulated emergency, which tested county-wide radio communications from the group’s command center — a mobile trailer known as EM50 — parked behind the Portage Co. Annex building.
From Baton Rouge to Belize, local ham radio operators talk around the globe[BATON ROUGE, LA] The small room near the top of the USS Kidd is tight, with just about enough room for a ham radio and, at a stretch, four people.
For ham operators Pam and Jeff Welsh, it’s all the space they need.
On the morning of Oct. 13 the pair — both members of the Baton Rouge Amateur Radio Club — were hunched over a ham radio, fiddling with dials and knobs as the sound of static filled the room. The BRARC, for short, was marking the occasion of the U.S. Navy’s birthday by transmitting from the Kidd, with people tuning in from around the country and farther afield.
In Episode 414, I join Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss:
We would like to thank our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit – http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate
The episode’s feature is Simple Test Gear You Can Build.
SB SPCL @ ARL $ARLX013
ARLX013 Solar Eclipse QSO Party Seeks Amateurs and Radio Enthusiasts for Global Experiment
ZCZC AX13
QST de W1AW
Special Bulletin 13 ARLX013
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT October 2, 2023
To all radio amateurs
SB SPCL ARL ARLX013
ARLX013 Solar Eclipse QSO Party Seeks Amateurs and Radio Enthusiasts for Global Experiment
ARRL is proud to partner with HamSCI to help promote participation in the Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP). SEQPs are a series of global experiments — and you can be a part of them. Solar eclipses will pass across the continental United States on October 14, 2023, and
April 8, 2024.
During these celestial events, you can join thousands of fellow amateurs as part of the largest crowd-sourced event for ham radio scientific exploration. The SEQP is part of the Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science and is for learning more about how the ionosphere works.
All radio amateurs need to do is operate using any mode and any band for all or part of the day, then upload their logs. Participation can be from anywhere; you don’t need to be near the path of the eclipse to contribute valuable data. You don’t even have to be a licensed ham to participate in the experiment (only to transmit).
For SEQP contest and rules, visit https://www.hamsci.org/contest-info .
For information on the Gladstone Signal Spotting Challenge using CW, WSPR, and FST4W, go to https://www.hamsci.org/contest-info .
If you’re an SWL or AM DXer, you might be interested in the Medium Wave Recording Event. Go to https://www.hamsci.org/mw-recordings/ for more information . Or just get on the air and help provide data to better understand the ionosphere.
The first SEQP is on Saturday, October 14, 2023, from 1200 – 2200 UTC, and participants may use any band or mode (except WARC bands). Researchers will take the submitted logs and work to derive meaningful observations from the data.
ARRL members can find out more about the SEQP by reading “The Solar Eclipse QSO Party: A Fun Way to Support Radio Science” in the September/October 2023 issue of On the Air magazine. The On the Air podcast will feature the article’s author, Gary Mikitin, AF8A, talking about the event. The episode will go live on October 12.
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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:
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.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.”
