HamSCI Workshop 2025: A Little Bit Of Citizen Science-ing

[This post contains: my “fake” journal article which is actually a rather nice write-up of the very real work I have done if I do say so myself, a printable copy of my poster, and the raw and processed data from this experiment. I am putting it all on here because of the interest that was expressed at the HamSCI Workshop on this simple little study.]

You may recall that waaayyyy back on April 8, 2024, I was inspired by HamSCI’s Solar Eclipse QSO Party to get on the air. I tried making a few phone contacts with SSB, but I really did not manage to get all that many. On the other hand, I let my WSPR transmitter cycle from 80M to 10M over and over again throughout the entire eclipse which did get several hundreds of spots. I got ahold of this data through WSPR Rocks! and spent a bit of time analyzing it. The long and short of it was that WSPR transmissions from my location in Upstate New York were received at longer distances at the maximum obscuration of the sun and beyond than they were before maximum obscuration on 30M (and somewhat less convincingly 20M). I thought the data was interesting and self-published a fake journal article with very real results for my own amusement.

About two or three weeks ago, I saw a reference to this year’s HamSCI Workshop at the New Jersey Institute of Technology on a ham radio forum. It occurred to me that I should present my solar eclipse work! It also occurred to me I was past the submission deadline. But it looked like perhaps there was space for a few more posters, so I inquired anyway, and was happy to learn that my work was accepted. I scrambled a bit, but a week later I had a gorgeously printed 3-foot by 4-foot poster to take to the conference. I have embedded it below.

And just to keep it all together, here is the article I created last year. The superscripts of the charts in the poster are more appropriate than what I wrote in the paper, so I suggest you refer to those. Again, I probably do not have to tell you but in case I do, the KM1NDY Secret Amateur Radio Journal is a figment of my imagination. I did this for fun! The study, however, is very much real.

And finally, this is where you can download all of my raw and processed data in case you would like to work with it yourself. I know I had a few inquiries about it at the HamSCI workshop.

All in all, this was a delightful conference. It reminded me how much I missed being an academic at times. I met a lot of wonderful, smart, and enthusiastic people, mostly hams, who were there also just because they liked the subject matter.

On the way home, I came across Kent Falls State Park in Connecticut. The cascades caught my eye as I was driving by.

The important part of all this is to remember that it is possible to do real science as a citizen. We actually do not need to be part of an institution or get any special permission (unless of course you are doing something that needs it) to conduct an experiment. In fact, the hidden subtext behind my “fake” publication is that I did not need anyone’s validation of my work or approval for it to be published. I was perfectly capable of putting my own findings in writing, attaching them to my website, and putting them out to the world to see. I would even be able to style them myself in the accepted technical journal format without any hiccups, just a bit of creativity (and electronic editing savvy). I could be a scientist without any platform other than my own little corner of the internet. And truthfully, it is not me I am trying to convince of this; it is you! You too are a scientist if you want to be.

I will say, HamSCI does take citizen science up a couple more notches though. My point of submitting a poster at all to the Workshop was to feel as though I belonged there, had something to contribute, rather than just being an uninvolved guest. And my results were rather interesting at least I had thought, and it was actually nice to learn others thought so too. It was a great introduction to the program and I am already thinking of projects for next year…

May the skip eternally roll through!

KM1NDY