HAMSCI asks Canada to Reconsider Shortwave Shutdown
/Canada, where the popular shortwave time service, CHU, has been marked to go off the air later this month. A major citizen-science organisation has asked officials to change their minds.
The citizen science investigation organisation HamSCI has asked Canadian officials to halt their planned shutdown later this month of its shortwave time-signal station CHU, saying it has unique and irreplaceable value to researchers and the international scientific community.
A statement on HamSCI's website praises CHU for its longstanding role as a resource in auroral research. Its unprecedented citizen-science study of the 2024 solar eclipse over North America also relied heavily on CHU's capabilities.
“The use of time standard beacons as ionospheric signals of opportunity dates back more than a century to the earliest days of radio science. Today, this time-tested approach is supercharged by inexpensive single-board computers, software-defined radios, and the participation of the global amateur radio and shortwave listener community, who have built a growing meta-instrument that spans the continent of North America and points beyond.”
HamSCI’s flagship project, the Personal Space Weather Station Network, is also closely intertwined with CHU and its remote-sensing capabilities.
