The ARRL Letter, August 16, 2018

The ARRL Letter
August 16, 2018
Rick Lindquist, WW1ME, Editor

[Note: Clicking on the story links below will take you to the news article as it appears in The ARRL Letter on the ARRL website.]

• HAARP’s WSPR Research Campaign Yields Hundreds of Reports on 40 and 80 Meters
• Indonesian Hams Take Advantage of Satellite for Post-Earthquake Communication
• NIST FY 2019 Budget Would Eliminate WWV and WWVH
• Texas Volunteer Examiner Setting Sights on Next 1,000 Exam Sessions
• The Doctor Will See You Now!
• ARISS Packet Radio System Expected to be Back Late this Year
• 4U1UN UN Amateur Radio Club Operation Could Resume Later this Year
• Storm Takes Down Antennas at Memorial Ham Station on Swedish-Norwegian Border
• Ham-Astronauts among First Nine Astronauts Scheduled to Fly on Commercial Spacecraft
• Dave Popkin, W2CC/AAR2BU, Receives Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award
• In Brief…
• The K7RA Solar Update
• Just Ahead in Radiosport
• Upcoming ARRL Section, State, and Division Conventions

HAARP’s WSPR Research Campaign Yields Hundreds of Reports on 40 and 80 Meters

Just-completed research at the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitters in Gakona, Alaska, successfully took advantage of the WSPR digital protocol and the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter Network (WSPRnet) on July 30 through August 1. University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Space Physics Group researcher and HAARP Chief Scientist Chris Fallen, KL3WX, told ARRL that the research — HAARP’s fourth research campaign under management of the University of Alaska Fairbanks — went well.

“My ‘citizen science’ experiments were funded by the National Science Foundation and were conducted for approximately 30 minutes at the end of each campaign day,” Fallen said. “They consisted of 2-minute transmissions using the WSPR digital mode in the 40- and 80-meter bands, with a 2-minute off period between transmissions.” He said HAARP transmitted in full-carrier, double-sideband AM because it does not have SSB capability. HAARP operated under its Part 5 Experimental license, WI2XFX, with Special Temporary Authority (STA) from the FCC to transmit on amateur bands.

“I systematically varied the HAARP transmission parameters, such as gain, net power, beam direction, and polarization, to see how they affected the reception reports collected in the WSPRnet.org database,” Fallen said. “During the 3 days, we gathered more than 300 confirmed reports of signal strength and location from nearly 100 unique participants throughout Canada and the US.”

Fallen said the spots, collected along with the corresponding HAARP transmission parameters, are available online, (1) and (2). He said the spreadsheet at the second link is editable by the public, “specifically by citizen scientists who want to manually add their spot or other interesting data analysis,” he added. “In this sense, the experiment continues.”

He said that HAARP’s low-elevation transmissions on 40 meters resulted in the greatest number of spots. “The most distant spot was located at grid EL96xi, near Boca Raton, Florida, reported by W1NEJ, from a distance of 6,154 kilometers,” Fallen said. “Interestingly, HAARP was aimed in the magnetic west direction during that spot.”

HAARP and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico are planning to conduct heating campaigns this fall, Fallen noted, although not at the same time, as experimenters are shared. Read more.

Indonesian Hams Take Advantage of Satellite for Post-Earthquake Communication

Amateur Radio volunteers in Indonesia have been taking advantage of the LAPAN-ORARI (IO-86) ham satellite in addition to HF on 7.110 MHz as the Lombok area recovers from two recent earthquakes. The death toll has topped 400. A second powerful earthquake in the area on August 5 killed at least 98 people and seriously injured more than 200 others.

Power in the area has been disrupted, and Kardi Wibisono, YB9KA, and Untung “Adi” Riadi, YB9GV, of the West Nusa Tenggara Region chapter of ORARI, the Indonesian national Amateur Radio organization, have been leading efforts

Read the full article at https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/the-arrl-letter-august-16-2018.624329/. STRAY SIGNALS does not claim ownership of the article.

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