The North American April 8th 2024 Eclipse - An Amateur Radio Perspective
- Joe Almeida
- Jan 13
- 3 min read
In April 8th of 2024, a solar eclipse made its way across essentially the Ohio Valley in the US, into Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, continuing along the St Lawrence river before disappearing to the East.
In the lead up to the Eclipse, the experimental group called HamSci, working in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania, put out a call to the amateur radio community to assist with a specific project.
Called the The HamSCI Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science - this group of volunteers operates during a solar eclipse in regions or near totality or 100% totality in order to see the effect to ham radio signal strengths across the various bands as the shadow moves. By gathering data during the solar eclipse movement, atmospheric scientists get to study the interplay of solar radiation to the upper atmosphere, and a contrast and comparison can be made to radio signals within shadow areas, to those areas unaffected.
To assist with this project, in December of 2023, I took possession of a QRP Labs Ultimate3S QRSS/WSPR kit, and an HFKits End Fed antenna kit with the intent of assembling the kits, and deploying the setup outside of the work location where the solar eclipse was at 99% of totality.
The HF end-fed antenna kit was straight forward with the winding of the toroids, cutting of wire length, soldering of components and case assembly for the toroid completed in an evening. SWR testing showed a very usable antenna without further trimming, and attaching a tuner led to re-tuning without much difficulty by the tuner equipment.
The QRP WSPR transmitter has proven to be much more of a challenge. Due to a careless setting of voltage, I effectively destroyed the electronic boards of the kit that arrived in December. In January of 2024, I ordered a second kit, along with a tunable power supply with preprogrammed settings to prevent a future mishap.
That second kit was completed, programmed and underwent operational testing with its power setting at 250 mW. No WSPR transmissions were successfully made with the HF end-fed antenna. A manual tuner was introduced to improve interfacing with the antenna, but this still was not successful. A test was then done with the unit with a receiving radio and computer listening - the device was picked up and reported - so the kit was properly putting out an intelligible signal.
The QRP kit was set aside and the backup plan was put into place. My Icom 705 was used with the HF antenna and there was no success. Reception of WSPR was not an issue and quite effective, both on WSPR and voice, thus the antenna was not suspected of issues. As I was running out of time, I switched to my Icom IC7200.
The 7200 successfully did WSPR transmissions at 5 watts. The power levels were scaled back to 2 watts, then 1 watt. In all all testing WSPR was successful. Testing was done at the work location in March and WSPR transmission were successfully done. The setup, while not the original design, was ready for operation.
On April 8th, the IC7200 was used to undertake the experiment with the end-fed antenna spread across the top of the building and run down the side.
Transmissions started in the morning, establishing a baseline area. Transmissions typically formed a circle starting in Montreal, to New York, down to Kentucky, then to Chicago, and back to Montreal. The situation slowly started to change as the eclipse shadow made its way north. Transmissions from my station were seen further south along the Ohio Valley. As the shadow reached Niagara, transmissions were making it to Denver Colorado, Texas. At the darkest point - transmission were successfully picked up in Vancouver and Halifax. Essentially, the eclipse mimicked the night with longer distance transmissions.
As the eclipse passed, the geographical reception envelope shrank, being slightly larger than the original envelope - and probably normal for that of day.
The effect of the eclipse was dramatic, and some predictions I made in what I should see were proven true. Wrapping things up, my setup schematics and photos of the setup were sent into HamSci as requested.
All in all, the prep, and the operation of this station was fun, and I learned a lot - what conditions were typically using WSPR, but also, about operating QRP and seeing what power levels I was able to use to get my transmissions reported.
This project has got me thinking about participating in other HamSci projects. Lots to think about, but also, time to manage!
73,
Joe de VA3AZS/VA3POR
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