Looking for information on the June Eclipse Festival of Frequency Measurement? Click here to be redirected.

8 December 2019: Data from the FFM is currently being processed.If you submitted data to the Festival of Frequency Measurement, and your callsign is omitted from the list below, contact kd8oxt@case.edu:
AA8K, AC6SL, AG7PQ, AJ4YA, K0ANS, K2LYV, K4BSE, K7JKM, K7KMQ, KA6WKE, KE0ARE, KG4ARN, KM4YMI, N1IRO, N1NAZ, N2MD, N7IVV, N7QNM, N7XZ, N8OBJ, N9MVO, NA0B, NU0C, VA3ROM, VE3OAT, VE3YX, VE6GRT, VE6IXD, VE7CNF, VK3ZAZ, W1KU, W3FAY, W6BM, W6MSU, W6OQI, W8EDU, W9INE, WA5FRF, WA7BNM, WB4HIR, WB6HYD, WV5L, WX4US, XE3I

Data is available at https://zenodo.org/record/3707210.

Wednesday, 25 September 2019: This page is in (mostly) final form
(one week before the event)
The page may change in small details, but please plan your activities on these instructions.

We celebrate the centennial of National Institute of Standards and Technology radio station WWV with

The Festival of Frequency Measurement

01 October 2019 0000 to 2359 UTC

(begins Monday evening 30 September 2019 in the Americas)

Introduction

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, HamSCI and the Case Amateur Radio Club of Case Western Reserve University W8EDU request that all amateur radio stations, shortwave listeners, and others capable of making high-quality HF frequency measurements participate in the next "phase" of this experiment and publish their data to the HamSCI community on the open-data sharing site zenodo.org.

Contact information:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/festival-of-frequency-measurement/join

David Kazdan: ad8y@arrl.net

Research Questions

How does WWV 5 MHz's HF propagation path vary over one UTC calendar day?
How do various measurement techniques for understanding the path variation compare?

Objective

Measure Doppler shifts caused by space weather's effects on the ionosphere.
Use a specified measurement protocol available to amateur radio operators and other citizen-scientists.

Times

(Control Day was 01 August 01 2019, 0000 – 2359 UTC)
Centennial Day: 01 October 2019, 0000 – 2359 UTC

Please begin measurements before the day's start time and end them after the finish time, if possible.

The Beacons

The NIST beacon station WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA (and co-located WWVB) is shown here:

WWV broadcasts on 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 MHz. This experiment will use only the 5 MHz transmissions. If you want to participate and cannot record the 5 MHz signal, use whichever WWV frequency you can and make sure the file is labeled appropriately.

The recordings in this experiment are expected to show formations of the D-layer at stations' local sunrise and other daily events of the ionosphere. Space weather varies day to day and some features may be prominent. We'll see what we get!

Procedures

1) Prepare Your Receiver, Computer, and Software (fldigi)

Use your most stable receiver. Use a good sound card (the one inside your receiver, if it is so equipped).

Fldigi has a mode called "WWV" for calibrating the soundcard. Run it if you can easily; if not, leave your soundcard as is and we will adjust the file if necessary.

We specifically request that you use of the open-source software package fldigi. Its "frequency analysis" mode generates a file of frequency deviations, automatically named "analysis.csv." It will be in the directory /fldigi/temp/, or .fldigi/temp/, or some equivalent.

Download fldigi, install it, verify that it's working correctly. Find the "frequency analysis" module in the "op mode" pulldown menu.
Set your receiver's mode to USB (upper sideband). Tune an AM station's carrier to 1000 Hz audio by setting your receiver that much below the carrier frequency. For 5 MHz WWV, tune to 4.999 MHz and listen for the 1000 Hz tone (musicians: 1000 Hz is musically below C two above middle C [i.e., C₆] if you want to check that way).
Look for the 1000 Hz line on fldigi's waterfall. Click the cursor there or use the offset frequency box at the bottom of fldigi's screen. Look for "writing CSV file" on the lower line of fldigi, toward the left.
Now, leave fldigi alone. Every time you make a change or move that cursor, the CSV file ("comma-separated variables," the data file you're recording) will be erased and a new one started. It's maddeningly easy to delete your work and fldigi does not make a backup.
Robert, VA3ROM, has offered a batch file for automating the renaming. It is for Windows. It may be found at the end of this document; use it if you wish but do try it before the event.
At the end of your recording period, close fldigi. The file "analysis.csv" should be in your /fldigi/temp/ directory.
Try all this before the day of the event.

2) Collect the data: Make sure Windows cannot be shut down by an automatic update!

Start as above. Now, leave fldigi alone. Every time you make a change or move that cursor, the CSV file ("comma-separated variables," the data file you're recording) will be erased and a new one started. It's maddeningly easy to delete your work and fldigi does not make a backup.
At the end of your recording period, close fldigi. The file "analysis.csv" should be in your /fldigi/temp/ directory.
Rename the file with your callsign and location.
Again, try all this before the day of the event.

3) Rename the Data File

You should finish with one data file named "analysis.csv". It should be about 2 MB.
Rename it with your callsign and location and frequency: "AD8Y 41.49 -81.58 5 MHz.csv"
Use the Maidenhead locator if you don't have latitude/longitude: "AD8Y EN91fl 5 MHz.csv"

4) Upload to Zenodo

We ask that all data generated by these experiments be uploaded to the HamSCI community on zenodo.org. The upload should include your .csv file from fldigi; you may upload other files that you feel are pertinent. By uploading to zenodo.org, a permanent, citable, centralized record of the data that is openly available to both researchers and the general public will be created.

To upload your data create an account on https://zenodo.org. You can create a login using your github account or via their account creation. Once you have an account and you are logged into the service visit “https://zenodo.org/deposit/new?c=hamsci”. Select your file(s), click “Start Upload”, select “Dataset” as your upload type, fill in all relevant information regarding contributors, and finally click "Save" and then “Publish” in the bottom right.

Here is an example completed Zenodo sample upload.

Data Description

In the data description box, please include: "Festival of Frequency Measurement 1 October 2019

Data Notes

Also in the Data Description box, you may include your personal comments regarding your observations. The "Description" block accepts multiple lines.

Your Name and Callsign
Latitude and Longitude of the Recording
Start time of the .csv file
A description of station hardware configuration, including
- Antenna type
- Antenna pointing direction (if applicable)
- Receiver type
- Frequency reference type
- Frequency measurement technique
Any other information you believe would be necessary for proper scientific interpretation of your measurements

If you find it helpful, you may copy the following template and include it with your submission. Again, you are encouraged to include any other information you feel may be helpful.

Festival of Frequency Measurement Submission

—-

event: WWV Centennial

UTC date:

beacon frequency:

station name:

latitude and longitude and/or maidenhead grid square:

city:

state or region:

Difficulties had:

Anything you know about the stability of your equipment:

soapbox:

Data License

Please license your data as:

Open Source
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

----------------------------------------------------------------

VA3ROM batch file:

rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------

rem Set fldigi.files directory path for your specific system

set "FLDIGI=c:\Users\Administrator\fldigi.files\temp\"

rem Default fldigi frequency analysis file name

set "FILE=analysis.csv"

rem Save copy of analysis file with date/time stamp if it exists

if exist %FLDIGI%%FILE% goto save

rem Tell user what has happened

@echo File "analysis.csv" not found . . .

pause

exit

:save

rem Get current computer system date/time

for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime /value') do set "dt=%%a"

rem Break up date/time into separate variables (local time used unless clock set to UTC)

set "YY=%dt:~2,2%" & set "YYYY=%dt:~0,4%" & set "MM=%dt:~4,2%" & set "DD=%dt:~6,2%"

set "HH=%dt:~8,2%" & set "Min=%dt:~10,2%" & set "Sec=%dt:~12,2%"

rem Rebuild date/time stamps into ISO standard format YYYYMMDDHHMMSS

set "datestamp=%YYYY%%MM%%DD%" & set "timestamp=%HH%%Min%%Sec%"

set "fullstamp=%YYYY%-%MM%-%DD%-%HH%%Min% UTC"

rem Copy old analysis file into new one with appended date/time stamp (fldigi will delete old analysis.csv file on startup)

copy %FLDIGI%%FILE% %FLDIGI%"analysis_%fullstamp%.csv"