Page 36 January February 2018 TCA

It’s measured continuously in two ways: by using
the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS),
colloquially called “GPS” (see Figure 9), and by
incoherent scatter radar (ISR) from ground stations
transmitting pulses straight up. The Madrigal web
server database network continuously collects and
stores TEC values from worldwide reporting
stations – archives go back nearly 20 years.
MY FINAL
Radio hobbyists can do real science, have fun,
learn a lot, and contribute invaluable data on
solar‑terrestrial events to help scientists figure out
what really goes on “up there”. Early results are
being published and there are two excellent
articles in the December 2017 issue of QST
magazine. The next total solar eclipse will be in
April 2024, with eastern Canada in the path of
totality, albeit it’s a southwest to northeast transit
coming up from Mexico. There’s also an annular
(ring) solar eclipse in June 2021 for most of
North America.
In closing, here’s one easy way you can help while
you sleep: leave your computers and radios turned
on at night (subject to area thunderstorms),
monitoring any radio data bands and streaming
data to one of the Amateur Radio web sever
database networks (most software is free). Any
person, group, organization, classroom, and so on,
can contribute and/or access collected data. – 73
REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
Amateur Radio Science Citizen Investigation
Figure 8B: K9AN WSPR North American Eclipse Results. Courtesy: WSPRnet.org
http://hamsci.org/
Eclipse Ballooning Project
http://eclipse.montana.edu/
Eclipse Time/Date Calculator
http://tinyurl.com/y8earrwh
How GPS “saw” the Solar Eclipse
http://tinyurl.com/y7wzrby7
http://tinyurl.com/yb6c4wu8
How ISS Astronauts saw the Solar Eclipse
http://tinyurl.com/yd7vrvwq
Measuring Solar Energy during an Eclipse
http://tinyurl.com/yccbey3z
NASA Eclipse Support
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html
Madrigal
http://tinyurl.com/y9do3sz8
TEC
Figure 9: How GPS “saw” the Solar Eclipse. GPS geodetic map showing the amount of
http://tinyurl.com/y9r9ndac change in the ionosphere’s TEC by mid-eclipse (1815 UT) as compared to eclipse start
(1615 UTC). Varying levels of the TEC cause varying delays in satellite microwave signals
travelling down to earth. Negative change (towards blue) means better low band
propagation; positive change (towards red) means better high band propagation.
Courtesy: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

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