RadCom April 2024, Vol. 100, No. 4

Report 44 April 2024 column. Jim, G3YLA had a busy year again with his research into Sporadic-E and work on the website propquest.co.uk He gave five talks on the subject to Telford and District ARS, Norfolk ARC, Harwell ARS, Mid-Sussex ARS and at the RSGB Convention. The Propquest website, kindly hosted by Weatherquest, continues to provide near real-time displays of ionosonde data. During the main Es season, Jim also prepared a daily blog on the likely importance to Es of various weather features on upper air charts. Further work will be done on the refinement of the EPI map and possible inclusion of detailed ionosonde time-domain plots of Es events. Jim also hopes to be able to add data from the RSGB meteor beacon project by Brian Coleman, G4NNS into the Es database in the future. Gwyn, G3ZIL has completed a study of two- hop sidescatter at HF, with talks, a RadCom article and a poster at the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Work in progress includes documenting the October 2023 annular eclipse propagation changes using FST4W data and an AGU poster. Chris, G4IFX had a busy year. Firstly, Chris and others contributed sections to US-based HamSCI’s Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF’s “Heliophysics and Amateur Radio” article and work by other PSC members was also featured (read more about this below). Chris continued to run the PSC Science Workshops via Zoom for the extended PSC membership and they’ve generated some very interesting and useful discussions, with topics including long-delay echoes, moonbounce propagation, and ionospheric ray-trace modelling. Lastly, Chris got his PhD! The thesis title is “Radio propagation through ionospheric sporadic-E” and PSC wishes to congratulate him on this achievement. Ron, G3SVW, PSC’s man in the northwest, has been maintaining an interest in propagation with a small group in the South Manchester area. One subject of discussion has been the categorisation of fading for signal reporting. Sam, G4DDK continued to push 9cm EME paths with a smallish system and says the threat and challenges to 23cm EME are still of concern. Barry, G8AGN had three articles published in DUBUS and one in RadCom Plus on 30THz. He also gave two talks and demonstrations of 30THz operating at the Finningley Round Table in June. And finally, I (PSC Chairman Steve, G0KYA) continued my work on the HF section and compilation of GB2RS, wrote an HF propagation update for the RSGB Yearbook and gave several online talks to clubs around the UK. I also ran the PSC stand at the RSGB Convention and managed the online Proppy and VOACAP versions of the RadCom HF predictions. Steve Nichols, G0KYA psc.chairman@rsgb.org.uk Propagation Studies Committee members contribute to international scientific paper Several RSGB Propagation Studies Committee (PSC) members recently contributed to a paper in the USA entitled “Heliophysics and amateur radio: citizen science collaborations for atmospheric, ionospheric, and space physics research and operations”. The paper, prepared by HamSCI, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers of Astronomy and Space Science (see: https://doi.org/10.3389/ fspas.2023.1184171). HamSCI is a US-based organisation that aims to advance scientific research and understanding through amateur radio activities, encourage the development of new technologies to support this research, and provide educational opportunities for the amateur community and the general public. The paper demonstrates convincingly the value of citizen science activities based around amateur radio and makes a strong case for more formal collaboration and funding for such initiatives. The paper’s UK authors and subjects include Cathryn Mitchell, M0IBG on “Ray Tracing”, Chris Deacon, G4IFX on “Sporadic E”, and Gwyn Griffiths, G3ZIL on “WSPR and FST4W in amateur literature”. Associate members of the PSC involved in the project included Bill Liles, NQ6Z on “HF Doppler observations of travelling ionospheric disturbances”. Other PSC members whose research was referenced in the paper included Marcus Walden, G0IJZ on “Near-vertical incidence sky wave links at 5MHz”; Steve Nichols, G0KYA on “Recent grey- line research”; Jim Bacon, G3YLA on “Sporadic-E studies in amateur literature” and “Online prediction tools under development”; and Carl Luetzelschwab, K9LA on his work for The CQ Shortwave Propagation Handbook . Finally, Peter Martinez, G3PLX is referenced for his 2007 work “Long delayed echoes: A study of magnetospheric duct echoes”. The paper reviews the history of amateur radio and science back to 1912, with the greatest emphasis on results that have come out in the past ten years. It resulted from expanding and combining two white papers submitted to the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033, which helps the United States establish research priorities for the next ten years. As such, this paper not only reviews past results but also provides recommendations for amateur radio/professional science collaborations in the future. The paper says the amateur radio community is a global, highly engaged, and technical community with an intense interest in space weather, its underlying physics, and how it impacts radio communications. Well-established amateur radio networks like the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN), WSPRNet, and PSKReporter already provide rich, ever-growing, long-term data from ionospheric observations. The paper discusses the scientific and technical capabilities of the global amateur radio community, reviews methods of collaboration between the amateur radio and professional scientific communities, and summarises recent peer-reviewed studies that have used amateur radio data and methods. RSGB Propagation Studies Committee chairman Steve Nichols, G0KYA said it was great to see radio amateurs and scientists joining together on research. “This shows that the research work completed by PSC members is both valued and relevant to a wider scientific audience,” Steve said. “We fully intend to collaborate with HamSCI in the future on projects that could be beneficial.” “By extending PSC’s reach to the USA we Gwyn, G3ZIL being interviewed for video by David Palmer, G7URP on the PSC stand at the RSGB Convention. To read more about the Propagation Studies Committee visit rsgb.org/psc