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The Solar Eclipse and Ham Radio Nuts Volts MagazineLook out here she comes, shes comin, Look out there she goes, shes gone,Screamin straight through Texas, Like a mad dog cyclone. Texas 1. Guy Clark. Here It Comes. Guy Clarks classic song about an express train could be about the upcoming solar eclipse just change the third line to Screamin through America and the title to August 2. I hope you have Monday, August 2. A total solar eclipse will be seen on that day by millions of people from Portland, OR to Charleston, SC. Many more millions will see a partial eclipse. The US couldnt have a better opportunity. Amateur Radio document library, antennas, schematics, homebrewing, connections. Resistance 101 Why You Should Consider Ham Radio for Communications. Best Ham Radio Propagation Software Linux' title='Best Ham Radio Propagation Software Linux' />While totality in which the entire solar disc is blocked by the Moon will be viewable at any point along the path for about two minutes, some portion of the Sun will be covered by the Moon across the US including Alaska and Hawaii, Canada, Central America, the Caribbean, and some of northern South America. The orthographic map from NASA in Figure 1 shows how much of the Sun will be covered and the approximate time. If you are one of the lucky ones, the path of totality shown by the blue line will be close enough for you to see the fully covered solar disc. FIGURE 1. An orthographic map showing where the eclipse will be visible in the Western Hemisphere. The path of totality is the heavy blue line, with the width indicating the length of totality. The grid is labeled with the fraction of the Sun that will be covered at that location 0. Graphic courtesy of NASA. The Eclipse and Radio. The optical effects of an eclipse are relatively obvious and well understood. Partial solar eclipses are fairly common and lunar eclipses even more common. Not many of us have witnessed totality, but most people have seen some type of eclipse. What very few people have observed is the effect an eclipse has on radio propagation. Best Ham Radio Propagation Software' title='Best Ham Radio Propagation Software' />Features a large collection of links covering ham radio and DX topics. Ham radio site with Amateur radio links and a collection of over 2800 Ham Radio sites services verified each week. Including DX band conditionsDX spots for. Ham radio transceivers. How to chose the one that is right for you and avoid costly mistakes. Main Propagation Menu Aurora Resources HowTo Articles Is HF Propagation Reciprocal Demystifying HF Radio Propagation and Modeling Check out the ACEHF. As the May and July 2. UV light from the Sun creates the ionosphere by giving enough energy to electrons for them to escape from the outer shells of atoms of gas mostly oxygen and nitrogen. These free electrons and the positively charged ions left behind can act like charges in a wire that respond to a voltage. That means the ionosphere is a very weak conductor that can affect the electromagnetic radio waves passing through it. The main effect is bending or refracting the waves in a way that returns them to the surface of the Earth. The effect is that of a reflecting surface high above the Earth the ionosphere starts at about 3. Not every wave gets the same treatment, however. The higher the waves frequency, the less it is bent. Above some frequency, the wave cant be bent enough to return and so is lost to outer space. At the other end of the spectrum, the ionosphere becomes lossier and lossier, eventually soaking up all of the signal so that none of it returns to the Earth below a certain frequency. Between these two limits, the waves are bent, channeled, guided, and otherwise pushed around. More UV during the daylight hours raises the level of ionization. This allows the ionosphere to bend higher frequency signals more, supporting long distance skip of 2,5. MHz. Below 1. 0 MHz, more UV means more absorption by the ionospheres lower layers. The signals never make it through to those long distance bending layers. At night, the situation reverses. The outcome of all this wave bending is which signals we can receive depends on a variety of factors signal frequency, season, solar and geomagnetic activity, and time of day are the most significant. The easiest things we can control and vary to see what happens to our signals are time of day and frequency. Hams have a lot of frequency choices. Free Driver Scan And Update Windows 7. In fact, next to the military, amateur radio has a bigger variety of frequency bands available to it than any other service. With the new 6. 30 meter band 4. Hz and the 2,2. 00 meter band 1. Hz, hams will have access to frequencies from well below the AM broadcast band to, well, light. Time of day is pretty easy to control. Assuming someone is out there to make a contact, you can try any band at any time. Having been at this radio business since 1. However, there is always something new coming up. Either better equipment or protocols or science enables us to try something different, and there is usually something new to be discovered around every bend in the ionospheric road. The eclipse is particularly interesting this way. It is one thing for night to slowly fall as the Sun sinks below the horizon its quite another for a complete day night day cycle to occur in three hours or less Totality will only last for a couple of minutes at most, but the partial phases will last up to three hours depending on how close you are to the path of totality. This means the solar UV will have a sudden well defined disruption as suggested by Figure 2. FIGURE 2. A sketch of how solar UV irradition of the ionosphere will change during the eclipse. Graphs are not to scale. The dashed gray line shows the regular diurnal daily variation in UV exposure. We know from past experience that a total eclipse of the Sun does have a big impact on ionospheric radio propagation. The eclipse duration will be long enough for those separated electrons and ions to find each other again a process called recombination and well have nighttime propagation. Bending on the higher frequency bands will fade and the signals will zip off into space those bands will close to long distance propagation. Simultaneously, absorption at the lower frequency bands will disappear and those bands will open. At the end of the eclipse, the reverse happens, and aside from some very confused electrons, things will be back to whatever normal conditions were before the eclipse. How Long Will It Last Everybody in the United States will get some view of the eclipse, depending on cloud cover. If you are fortunate enough to be on the line of totality, youll get the maximum length experience almost three hours from the time at which the lunar disc first begins to cover the Sun, until it is clear of the Sun again. Totality will last two minutes and 4. Carbondale, IL. For some idea of how long the eclipse will last at your location, try the web page at www. What are the Hams Doing As you might imagine, this level of change coupled with a major solar event has the ham radio community pretty excited. Hams already can hear the world turning as the daily ebb and flow of UV opens and closes different bands and different paths. Its a relatively slow process, taking minutes to hours. The opportunity to experience changes occurring so quickly you can hear them is another thing entirely. So, what are we doing about itWere throwing a party Actually, its going to be a QSO Party pronounced kyew so which means contact in which hams make short contacts as quickly as possible on as many bands as possible throughout the event. The bands will come to life in the morning and fill with signals throughout the day. The Solar Eclipse QSO Party SEQP will be one of the premier ham radio events of the year Solar Eclipse QSO Party Basics. See the Ham. SCI SEQP web page for complete rules and FAQ. Time and Date Monday, 2. Aug 2. 01. 7 from 1. UTC. Bands 1. 60, 8. MHz. Modes CW, PSK3. RTTY will be decoded and logged. Categories Single operator or multi operator team. Exchange Send the call sign of sending and receiving stations, signal report, and six character grid locator e.