Space Weather

[Gene McPhee]

Greetings from Killeen, Texas.  I'm Gene, N3XUS, a Ham Radio operator. I am in the beginning stages of researching Space Weather, and I have a couple of books on the subject. I am interested in any type of equipment that an amateur researcher could use to study this subject.

I appreciate any advice.

73,

Gene N3XUS

n3x...@yahoo.com

[Ronald Coppersmith]

Hey Gene,

If you want to study space radio, check out AMSAT and put together some high gain directional antennas to communicate with all the satellites in orbit.

Some of the best space weather information can be found following the Space Weather Woman, Dr Tamitha Skov.

Scott

[David Eckhardt]

SWPC - Space Weather Prediction Center - also has some very excellent tutorials on their www sites.  

If you have a good transceiver, you can use it to receive narrow band solar and jovian emissions using the 15-meter band.  Just be sure to turn off any noise blanker as some Jupiter emissions can be very "spikely" which the NB attempts to remove.  Solar bursts are easy to detect using your radio.  Just connect an antenna in a quiet location (not in a city), set the radio to AM, and just monitor.  You'll hear about any good solar burst.  You can also port the audio from the radio to Radio SkyPipe to make a strip chart recording of any narrowband solar or Jupiter emissions.  Again turn off the noise blanker, use AM demodulation, and turn off the AGC (which you can not do with the recent direct sampled radios).  

Over the past month, I've had my Icom R71 sitting on the 20-meter CW QRP frequency of 14.060 MHzin the background.  While pecking on the keyboard and doing whatever on the PC or soldering pen (I'm a home brewer), I've easily detected several solar bursts while I'm doing other things in the radio room.  They sound like a very noticeable rise in the receiver noise floor and if plotted, appear much like a double exponential with a fast rise time ans slower decay time.  At times, you'll hear multiple "noise-ups" connected to eachother.

Dave - WØLEV  

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Dave - WØLEV

[Doug Leber]

Welcome, Gene,

You’ve found a good group to learn about space weather. Check out the HamSCI website, HamSCI.org. You’ll see a link to the Personal Space Weather Station (PSWS) project, descriptions of instruments used, and some of the research questions the data may help us address. 

Cheers,

Doug NØMM 

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[GENE MCPHEE]

Hello my fellow Ham,

Thank you for the information. I appreciate your response.

73,

Gene N3XUS

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From: ham...@googlegroups.com <ham...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of David Eckhardt <davea...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2025 6:16 PM
To: ham...@googlegroups.com <ham...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HamSCI] Space Weather

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hamsci/CAODdWWH9t5e0Z5%3Do%2BOCW40RY%2ByT8n3R9XbinWsWQb7eeV1uhJw%40mail.gmail.com.

[GENE MCPHEE]

Scott,

Thank you for the info.

Gene

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From: 'Ronald Coppersmith' via HamSCI <ham...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2025 1:00 PM
To: HamSCI <ham...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [HamSCI] Re: Space Weather

 

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