wwv

Amateurs invited to participate in the Antarctic Eclipse Festival in December

Posted on by VA3DBJ

The HamSCI Antarctic Eclipse Festival in December is seeking Amateur Radio participation.

As the shadow of the moon passes across Antarctica on December 4, it will generate traveling ionospheric disturbances that will, in turn, affect radio propagation.

The unusual geometry of this year’s eclipses will give researchers an opportunity to investigate complicated ionospheric dynamics over the poles as the long daytime of polar summer is briefly interrupted by the eclipse.

During this and other HamSCI eclipse festivals, Radio Amateurs and citizen-scientists are asked to collect Doppler-shift data from time-standard stations, such as WWV.

All that’s needed is an HF radio connected to a computer. A GPS-disciplined oscillator is helpful for collecting data, but it is not required. Data collection will run from December 1 through December 10, and the results will be made available for scientific analysis.

All Radio Amateurs and shortwave listeners are invited to join in, even those located far from the path of totality. In 2020, more than 100 individuals from 45 countries took part in eclipse festivals.The instructions are available in multiple languages.

HamSCI is an initiative of Amateur Radio operators and geospace scientists dedicated to advancing scientific research and understanding through Amateur Radio activities. Eclipse festivals are pilot campaigns for the Personal Space Weather Station (PSWS), HamSCI’s flagship project. The PSWS team seeks to develop a global network of citizen-science stations. Participants monitor the geospace environment to deepen scientific understanding and enhance the radio art.

For more information on the Antarctic Eclipse Festival and how to participate, visit the HamSCI website. – Thanks to Kristina Collins, KD8OXT

For the results of the December 2020 Eclipse Festival please visit:

https://hamsci.org/december-2020-eclipse-festival-frequency-measurement

Original news item: courtesy of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL)

WWV Celebrating 100 Years

Posted on by VA3DBJ

The National Institute of Standards and Technology Radio Station WWV will be celebrating its 100-year anniversary in October 2019. The oldest continuously operating radio station in the world deserves a grand celebration.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Northern Colorado Amateur Radio Club (NCARC) have reached an agreement and are working together to organize the event.

NIST will focus on the plans for Tuesday, October 1, when they will host a recognition ceremony and an open house at the radio station north of Fort Collins. 

NCARC will operate a special event amateur radio station, call sign WW0WWV, on the WWV property starting September 28 and going 24-hours a day through October 2. The goal is to make as many U.S. and world-wide contacts during the 120-hour period as possible, using multiple bands and multiple modes on at least 4 simultaneous transmitters. The effort will require hundreds of volunteer operators.

Information on the Special Events Station visit: http://wwv100.com
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/events/2019/10/nist-radio-station-wwv-100-year-anniversary

National Weather Service Dropping High Seas and Storm Warnings on WWV/WWVH

Posted on by VA3DBJ

The National Weather Service (NWS) is discontinuing its high seas and storm warnings transmitted via National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) WWV/WWVH time and frequency-standard HF transmissions, starting January 31 at 1800 UTC. The NWS warnings are aimed at the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific.

“This service is being terminated because weather information in the current broadcast format does not support frequent-enough updates for changes in marine weather and cannot provide enough detail in the allotted window required by mariners to avoid hazardous weather,” NWS said in announcing the discontinuation. “Additionally, alternative technologies and numerous media outlets that provide weather information in various formats have overtaken the need for providing weather information through the NIST frequency signals.”

The NWS said other sources of marine weather information, high seas alerts, and detailed forecasts are available over satellite, telephone, the internet, marine fax, radio fax, and VHF radio. The NWS, US Coast Guard, and US Navy provide multiple dissemination methods for storm positioning, high sea areas, observations, forecasts, outlooks, and warnings for both coastal and oceanic marine zones near the US, all through a variety of technologies, including NAVTEX and the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS).

Source ARRL

NIST FY 2019 Budget Would Eliminate WWV and WWVH

Posted on by VA3DBJ

UPDATED: White House petition setup. See below.

ARRL – The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) FY 2019 budget request includes shutting down “NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii” — in other words, WWV and WWVH. Radio amateurs, HF listeners, and others around the world routinely make use of the time and frequency standard signals, which also include propagation information. NIST said eliminating funding currently “supporting fundamental measurement dissemination” would include putting WWV and WWVH off the air for a saving of $6.3 million. The overall NIST FY 2019 budget request is $127 million, which, the agency said, is a net decrease of $49 million from FY 2018 levels.

“The proposed reductions will allow NIST to consolidate and focus on narrower core [fundamental] measurement programs while meeting budget levels,” the agency said in its FY 2019 budget summary. “NIST will focus on basic research while reducing funding for efforts applying some of its breakthroughs into new measurement applications.

The FY 2019 proposed budget cuts developed earlier this year came to light via Tom Witherspoon, K4SWL, who maintains The SWLing Post website, after a number of viewers called it to his attention. He posted an article on his blog.

“I’ve always considered WWV and WWVH to be the heartbeat of the shortwaves here in North America — a constant, timely companion and brilliant gauge of HF propagation,” Witherspoon wrote. I assumed both stations would be some of the last to go silent on the shortwaves.”

NIST said other “illustrative” cuts in the FY 2019 budget include:

  • $3.5 million for Lab to Market, which seeks to accelerate technology transfer from federal laboratories
  • $6.6 million in environmental measurements projects across NIST laboratories, including work measuring the impact of aerosols on pollution and climate change, and gas reference materials used by industry to reduce costs of complying with regulations
  • $5.8 million eliminating the NIST Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Measurements program, including Urban Dome research grants to advance the direct measurement of GHG emissions on the scale of cities or regions.
  • $6.7 million in forensic science, reducing the program size to $7.3 million by prioritizing measurement science in the NIST labs and eliminating program management functions and external grants for the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science and the Forensic Science Center of Excellence 
  • $4.1 million in R&D targeting application of NIST quantum breakthroughs to applied measurement needs, including temperature and atmospheric gas metrology

“I find this budget request very disappointing,” Witherspoon said with respect to the proposed elimination of WWV and WWVH. “Let’s hope, somehow, this does not come to fruition.” He said The SWLing Post would be tracking and posting any new developments.

UPDATE: White House petition to maintain NIST funding of WWV time stations.

I recently read your article concerning the proposed shutdown of the NIST stations WWV/WWVH.
To that end, I have gone ahead and created a Whitehouse petition to see if this decision can be reversed:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-funding-nist-stations-wwv-wwvh
Would there be any way you could perhaps post the link to this so that fellow members of the SWLing Post could sign it? I believe the more folks we have sign the better chance we have of maintaining the radio stations we have all come to rely upon.

Tom Kelly
Click here to sign!