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Registration is now open for the 2021 HamSCI workshop. A full schedule of speakers and registration information can be found on the HamSCI Workshop 2021 website. The workshop will be held in a virtual format on Friday and Saturday, March 19-20. The University of Scranton will serve as host for the Zoom webinar, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), that will include addresses by guest speakers, poster presentations and demonstrations of relevant instrumentation and software. The theme of this year’s workshop is midlatitude ionospheric science. The workshop will also serve as a team meeting for the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station project, which is a NSF funded project awarded to University of Scranton physics and electrical engineering professor Nathaniel Frissell, Ph.D. The project seeks to harness the power of a network of licensed amateur radio operators to better understand and measure the effects of weather in the upper levels of Earth’s atmosphere.

Save the dates! The next HamSCI workshop will be held virtually March 19-20, 2021. The HamSCI workshop is an annual meeting to share scientific and engineering ideas and results related to amateur radio, radio propagation, and radio science, as well as foster collaborations between the amateur radio and professional space science and space weather communities. The 2021 workshop will serve as both a team meeting for the Personal Space Weather Station project, as well as a forum for presentations on topics relevant to the HamSCI mission. The format will be similar to virtual March 2020 HamSCI workshop. Thanks to support from the National Science Foundation and The University of Scranton, the cost of this workshop is free. Abstract will be due February 15^th. Information regarding abstract submission and other workshop details will be forthcoming. Please join the HamSCI Google Group to stay up-to-date on the latest information.

HamSCI Member Joe Dzekevich K1YOW recently published his article "Winter Sporadic-E-Like Propagation on 6 Meters" in the November 2020 issue of CQ Magazine. Joe writes:

"The question was asked: why do we see sporadic-E like propagation in November and December, when many of the variables like UV radiation and solar exposure are at a minimum, unlike the very active sporadic-E summer months?  Much like it was shown that North Atlantic transatlantic 6m propagation during the summer was made more possible by strategically placed weather storm systems, it looks like a similar effect with very strong jet stream boundaries also affect sporadic-e like communications during the winter months.  This citizen science study is another example how amateur radio can contribute to science, and illustrates the great potentials for studies using ham radio data.  We have many amateur radio stations on the air, using modes like FT8 which make contacts on propagation paths that we thought were previously impossible."

A PDF of the Joe's article is made available here with permission from CQ Amateur Radio magazine.

The ARRL Frequency Measurement Test (FMT) is a bi-annual event that has its roots back to 1931! Back then, it was needed to ensure that Official Observers (OOs) could correctly callibrate their radios for monitoring and policing purposes. The FMT is still quite relevant today, but for different reasons. Today, the most significant source of error on a stable recieved signal will be due to ionospheric variability. Therefore, making frequency measurements is of great interest to the HamSCI community. These types of measurements are some of the inspiration for the HamSCI Festival of Frequency campaigns and the Low-Cost Personal Space Weather Station.  The FMT is a great way to get started in learning how to take precision ionsopheric measurements. A new Frequency Measurement Test mode added to the free FLDigi program makes it even easier to participate. You can now download an article entitled "Using Fldigi for the ARRL Frequency Measuring Test (FMT)" by Bob Howard, VE3YX, to help get you started. The next FMT will be November 13, 2020 from 0200Z-0524Z. . Practice FMT sessions are being conducted by the fmt-nuts group as posted on their home page at https://groups.io/g/fmt-nuts. . Practice FMT sessions are being conducted by the fmt-nuts group as posted on their home page at https://groups.io/g/fmt-nuts. More details are available at https://fmt.arrl.org/ and in the November 2020 QST article by Ward Silver, N0AX. Thank you to FLDigi author Dave Freese W1HJK for his hard work in developing FLDigi and this new mode!