The Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e-POP) onboard the Canadian CAScade Smallsat and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) satellite will again support Amateur Radio citizen science by listening for signals during ARRL Field Day, June 24-25. The HamSCI citizen science initiative says that, from a radio science perspective, Field Day is an ideal time for e-POP to study the structure of Earth’s ionosphere using participants’ transmissions. HamSCI was started by ham-scientists who study upper atmospheric and space physics.
One of e-POP’s instruments is the Radio Receiver Instrument (RRI), a digital receiver with four 3-meter monopole antennas. Its scientific objective is to study natural and artificial radio emissions from 10 Hz to 18 MHz. The RRI’s monopoles can be electronically configured into a crossed-dipole setup, and it has two data channels — one for each dipole. Each channel is sampled at 62.5 kHz and passed through a 30-kHz bandpass.
During Field Day 2015, the RRI was activated for 2 minutes while e-POP was just north of Milwaukee, on a southeasterly heading. RRI was in a crossed-dipole configuration, with its two channels tuned to 3.525 and 7.525 MHz, respectively. A spectrogram that summarizes the results shows that not only were CW transmissions visible on the 40-meter channel (B), but they were only observed for about the first 30 seconds, even though the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) showed that these stations transmitted throughout the experiment period. No signals were received on the 80-meter channel (A), and, at least theoretically, those signals should not have been able to penetrate the ionosphere and propagate to the RRI during the experiment.
The signals heard can be used to study HF propagation, and the advantage of using Amateur Radio transmissions is that call signs readily identify a signal’s source, which can be fed into a HF ray trace model, and then used to elucidate the properties of the ionosphere during the experiment. During Field Day 2015, 23 call signs were identified.
One hypothesis under investigation is that is that the ham signals disappeared as the spacecraft headed south into latitudes where the ionosphere was denser and blocked the transmissions.
For Field Day 2017, e-POP will dedicate all of its resources to studying HF radio wave propagation using ham radio transmissions. The RRI will be tuned to the 40 and 80-meter CW bands, although precise frequencies have not yet been determined. RRI is scheduled to be activated 6 times, in 10-minute increments, over Field Day weekend.
All 2017 Field Day participants are encouraged to transmit on the 40 and 80 meters during the times indicated in this chart.
Pass | Date | Time (UTC) | Alt (km) | Direction | Region |
1 | June 24 | 2232-2242 | 800 | NS | East Coast |
2 | June 25 | 0013-0023 | 800 | NS | Central |
3 | June 25 | 0154-0204 | 800 | NS | West Coast |
4 | June 25 | 1135-1145 | 1350 | SN | East Coast |
5 | June 25 | 1317-1327 | 1350 | SN | Central |
6 | June 25 | 1458-1508 | 1350 | SN | West Coast |
The spacecraft’s mission and science operations are headquartered at the University of Calgary, and its operations are funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Source:ARRL
Review
The ARRL Foundation Board of Directors has selected Ellwood “Woody” Brem, K3YV, of Spring Mills, Pennsylvania, as the winner of the 2020 Bill Orr, W6SAI, Technical Writing Award for his article, “‘Leaky’ Antenna Switches,” which appeared in... Read more
App - Mobile
Marcus, DL8MRE announces that release of SmartSDR for iOS v3.9.12 is now available for download or update from the Apple App Store. SmartSDR is a full featured radio client that enables your iPad or iPhone to operate your FlexRadio device.... Read more
Antenna
Can Adding a Metal Mast Disrupt an Antenna?
“Stacy Pharis, KI5MIT, has a homebrew antenna very similar in concept to the DX Commander, all held up by a tree. She wants to know if using a m... Read more
80M Antenna with HOA Constraints
Welcome to the 400th Ask Dave video! Ken, VE7ZY, is having trouble with an 80m dipole mounted very closely to the roof flashing. He is seeking other a... Read more
Can I Put One End of a Dipole Next to my VHF Antenna?
Nick, KC3PWJ, has a flagpole and also a pole that holds up his VHF/UHF discone. He’d like to string a 20m dipole between the two poles, but is w... Read more
Wideband Antennas for SDR Radios
Flip, W4FLP, asked about options for wideband antennas for the popular RSP-DX software defined radio from SDRPlay. We cover three that should work fin... Read more
Bushcomm Horizon Multi-Band Loop Antennas LOOP-20
Antenna, Loop, Magnetic, 20-10M, 125 W PEP, Each Magnetic- loop antennas have existed almost since radio began. The recent resurgence of interest in t... Read more