Project Pursues Mysteries of Sporadic E-Skip

Loyd Van Horn, W4LVH, is a fan of mysteries, and there are perhaps few ham radio mysteries greater than that of Sporadic E-skip, which makes its appearance on VHF in the Northern Hemisphere every year at about this time.

Loyd is the force behind DX Central, a resource for DXers that does, among many things, data analysis. This month, he unveiled SEDAP, an acronym for his Sporadic Es Data Analysis Project. It can be found at fmdxdata.com and is free to use by hams, educators and anyone with a hobbyist's interest in this special season that turns propagation magical in the eyes of many.

He compiled more than 95,000 FM broadcast logs from North America to get the data relevant for the project, which goes beyond simple spreadsheets by adding interactive visualisations.

“SEDAP allows us to physically watch ionospheric clouds spawn, compress and track across the continent in real-time. We can finally see what a typical season looks like on a macroscopic level.”

— Loyd Van Horn, W4LVH

Loyd Van Horn also plans to include amateur radio data from 6 metres. He said that will permit analysis of days that had no propagation alongside days with active openings - days on which the maximum usable frequency did not reach the FM broadcast band.

Open-Source Software Modem Called a Vara Replacement

Developers have announced the release of Mercury, an open-source software modem that they are calling a replacement for Vara. Mercury is a digital radio OFDM protocol, which can be used for HF broadcast and peer-to-peer ARQ connections with compatible TCP interfaces.

According to Peter Bloom, general coordinator of the developer Rhizomatica, Mercury is compatible with Windows, Linux and several non-Intel architectures. 

“... the newest element of Rhizomatica’s HERMES software suite, it is built for reliable store-and-forward email and file transfer over HF radio links. He said it is compatible with most HF transceivers, and it complies with ham radio use. ”

— Peter Bloom, General Coordinator of the developer Rhizomatica

The project coordinator is  Rafael Diniz, PU2UIT. 

He said that Mercury has a number of advantages over Vara, including improved performance over high-SNR links.

There is no license fee.

More Information - https://www.rhizomatica.org

ARISS Announces Plans for Moon-Based Ham Radio

The Morse Code transmitted more than two years ago by JS1YMG, the lunar ham station of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is apparently just the beginning. Attendees at a Hamvention forum hosted by ARISS in Xenia, Ohio, recently learned about a moon-based project called CAVIAR. That's an acronym for "Communications, Audio, Video and Imaging using Amateur Radio." The feasibility of CAVIAR is being studied by ARISS and AMSAT through a partnership known as AREx, for Amateur Radio Exploration.

“....international effort to develop and operate amateur radio systems for deep space, starting at the moon and later to Mars.”

— ARISS

According to the early information being discussed publicly, the station could have support for voice, digital and video, with 10 GHz and 5 GHz links supported by a network of stations on Earth.