NASA Help Wanted: Ham Radio Operators Please Apply

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NASA recently recruited citizen scientists, and their latest call is looking for help from ham radio operators. They want you Make and report radio communications During 2023 and 2024 in North America. From their website:

The connection is possible due to interactions between our sun and the ionosphere, the ionized region of Earth’s atmosphere that lies approximately 80 to 1,000 km away. The upcoming eclipses (14th October 2023 and 8th April 2024) provide unique opportunities to study these interactions. As you and other members of HamSCI transmit, receive and record signals across the radio spectrum during the eclipse, you will generate valuable data for testing computer models of the ionosphere.

The next eclipse will be in October of this year and in April of 2024, so you have some time to arrange your stop. According to NASA, “It will be a fun and friendly event with a competitive element.” So if you like science, space, or competitiveness, it sounds like you’ll be interested. Now, the big event is the Eclipse QSO Party. There will also be a signal detection challenge, some measurements for WWV, CHU and AM broadcast stations, and ionospheric height measurements. There will also be some kind of very low frequency event. Details about many of these events are still pending.

Hams, of course, has a long history of experimenting with space. Signals routinely bounce off the moon. They also allow radio signals to bounce off the paths of ionized gas behind the meteors using special computer software.

More Information - https://www.hamsci.org/seqp-rules

Beware of Radio Selling Scammers

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Someone else got scammed by a regular scammer, selling an Icom 7300 from an alleged deceased estate in Turners Beach. The scammer took the money and ran, thankfully Bank of Queensland have frozen the bank account, pending further investigation.

The buyer said the seller was very confident on the phone, even sending a photo of his Tasmanian drivers licence indicating he lived in Rocherlea but it expired in 2021.

The seller usually lists the item as deceased estate, says he doesnt know much about it, and has claimed to live in Bicheno, Launceston, Ulverstone and other suburbs, but doesn’t want to meet up in person.

If you are fairly confident its a scam, you can google the bank account bsb number to see what bank it belongs to and contact the bank, they really appreciate the feedback.

Copy and paste photos of the image they supply into google image search, as they steal most images off the web to entice you to buy it, so you can soon see if its fraudulent.