Motivation

This project started from an interest in radio frequency propagation. New findings in ionospheric dynamics impact this propagation. Scientists have instruments that can detect these dynamics; Due to cost, the number of instruments are adequate but limited. In atmospheric dynamics, the governments of the world provide a large scale grid. Amateur meteorologist have setup personal weather stations to measure the atmospheric weather in their local area. Many of the amateur meteorologists have provided their data to data repositories.

Ionospheric weather measurement has been progressing in the last 25 years to the point we have sites with excellent detectors, but many places there are gaps in sensor coverage. These gaps are both by lack of citizen interest and lack of suitable devices. The objective of this project is to develop a Personal Space Weather Station.

To address this situtation, there is a group of individuals from TAPR, having a background in development of Software Defined Radios (SDR), together with a group of professional ionospheric physicists that are also amateur radio operators provide guidance on how to create the best possible instruments that can produce scientifically useful data at a reasonable cost.

This would be a great goal by itself, but most of the members of our group had Amateur Radio experiences that influenced our career choices. We are all interested in sharing these experiences with young people, that either just want to participate in a science related project, or potentially become an engineer, scientist or technical writer.

These motivations along with others help form the HamSci project and the TangerineSDR project.

If you made it to this site, and you want to more here is a video produced by NASA Goddard.

Welcome to the Ionosphere

The links at the top and bottom of this page, will lead you to pages about our meetings, projects, and information sources.

Allied Organizations

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