Copasetic Flow

 Sometimes you need a 3-D visualization of data, and sometimes you don't. I just posted a page  with foF2, hmF2, and MUFD(3000km) map images. All the maps are updated to the latest available data when you open or refresh the page. Map values are available—via tooltips—by hovering your map over the portion of the map your interested in. These maps contain the same data displayed in the 3-D Cesium Ion map . Please let me know what you think. All constructive feedback is welcome!

 ChatGPT wrote a little more starter code for me to answer the question, could we simply make an image of the F2 maps? Here are the current 3D F2 maps . These are great for visualizing what the ionosphere F2 height actually looks like. The maps are, however, a little memory and processor heavy. I wondered if would be faster to load a simple image for a daily driver sort of F2 map. I asked ChatGPT for help, and while things took longer this time, the LLM still made quicker work of the project. Here is one of the early sample outputs. Notice that the map is still split into grids in the same manner as the Cesium map. The only remaining task was either to display a legend on the same web page, or to use tooltips! I chose tooltips. To implement tooltips, I needed an html <map> tag containing the FoF2 values at each grid location with FoF2 image. That wound up being a bit of a journey. My first idea was to simply crank out an entire html page in the GitHub repos and display it he...

 I spent a little bit of time doing math debug this weekend, but in the end it turned out the QSO mapping app had a visualization issue, not a math issue. It was fun to get to look at the math for calculating the apparent launch angle of our antenna using F2 height data and rx/tx station locations. I wouldn't have thought to do the review except I had data that didn't match the maps I was getting back. According to the launch ange calculations made by our, (mine and KO6BTY's), QSO mapping app, the launch angle for the signal from our QTH was 0.00227 degrees. The map however, showed the path of the signal soaring over the very nearby Bay Bridge. The angle shown is much larger than 0.00227 degrees. Here's a picture of the nearby Bay Bridge with our antenna in the foreground. After completely reviewing the underlying math, it occurred to me that CZML likes to make lines that follow great circles. To make something that approximated a circle out of a path with a very low ...

This has been fun! KO6BTY and I have been working on QSO maps on 20 meters vs. the F2 layer for the last few years. We finally have a map of the F2 layer, one half hour behind real time with global data provided by the NOAA's GloTEC product . Check it out .

 KO6BTY and I have been playing with ground and spaced based ionospheric data for the last couple of years. This week, we started looking at the NOAA experimental GloTEC project's data. It's really nice in that it has virtually complete global coverage. Also, it's very up to date. At the time of this writing, it's 16:11 UTC and the most up to date data is from 15:45 UTC. I've used ChatGPT o3-mini to update our data analysis code for the new, to us,  GloTEC format and we're starting to see really interesting results. Below are two videos of maps we've created. The first one is for the maximum height of the F2 layer, also known as hmF2, and important for 20 meter ham radio propagation. The data is from Tuesday evening, 2025/02/12 UTC. The second is of the critical frequency, aka foF2, (the maximum frequency radio signal that will bounce vertically from the F2 layer), for the same time period. You can see the  Equiqtorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) very clearly ...

 I wanted to take a look at the ionosphere over North America late last week, and that meant I needed to explore ionospheric readings via radio occultation from the satellite constelations launched by Spire and PlanetIQ. Spoiler: I haven't been able to get ionospheric data from either constellation yet, but that's a data publishing issue, not a data file structure issue. Exploring the availabel data was a bit clunky at first to say the least. Then, it occurred to me that I could probably ask an AI to write Python code to pull out the strucutre of each netCDF file somewhat automatically. Sure enough, the Google Gemini search enginee version gave me an immediate answer I modified the code just a bit per my personal taste. The complete code can be seen here . From there, with only the filename, I could get output like Where to get the data I was having the best luck with PlanetIQ data as published by UCAR at  https://data.cosmic.ucar.edu/gnss-ro/planetiq/noaa/nrt/level2/2024/ How...

 I've posted a bit of information about this POTA outing already  photos AM0ID audio with aurora flutter The last thing left to report are the QSOs, the QSO map, and radio placement. Here goes I made a total of 34 QSOs with two of them reaching to Argentina and El Salvador. There were no QSOs made north of Denver on Thursday evening. I believe this corresponded roughly to a cutoff caused by the aurora.  The rig was spotted in New Zealand and Fiji, but no QSOs in either place. Finally, here's how the rig was sited above the tent

 I managed to record the affect of the Aurora Borealis on 20 meter ham radio signals while camping above Mountainair, NM last week. Here's the video: Notice that the first signal coming in from Kansas via AM0ID has a flutter superimposed on their CW. My sidetone, of course, does not. Finally, you can hear that K6KMH from Southern California does not have a flutter on their CW.

Found this cute video about equitorial plasma bubbles and why they matter from an international consortium between Japan, Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. They've deployed a series of very high frequency, (VHF), radar to detect bubbles in real-time to avoid problems with important things like airplane automatic landing systems. Here's the video . 

 We got to camp a bit more in the middle of nowhere than we usually do while traveling across Utah last weekend. My partner found the Burr Trail Scenic Byway. I've looked for a route across southern Utah for the last several years, but had somehow missed this really nice, well-paved, little road. We camped at the foot of an East-facing cliff, and the QSO map for the POTA reflected that fact pretty nicely: Based on this overall map, I didn't think we could hit the West Coast because of this cliff face. Almost all of the QSOs and spots paid attention to that cliff face. And then, there was N0OI: How? How had the signal cleared the cliff and skipped out to Perris, CA? Using data from the Boulder, CO ionosonde , at the time Project TouCans was spotted in California, the F2 layer skip is modeled in the gif below. Note that it clears the mesa, (just barely.) The other skip off to the Southeast was headed to the Cayman Islands. All of the skewing around is to convince myself that the ...

 Diaze (the 12 year old kid here) and I are adding F2 skip paths to the QSO maps from Project TouCans. One point of the project is to give us us an opportunity for Diaze to learn Python. Another point is to better visualize what the radio is doing with real-time data—within a 7 minute window—about the F2 layer! I'll talk more about unschooling and learning Python in another post, for now, here are some of the results we're seeing! Yesterday I made a single QSO to VE7ZD in Canada. I mapped out all the reverse beacon network spots for KD0FNR as well as the QSO using our  new code additions . I can see that the radio did it's usual thing of hitting the stations in the Bay area first. Stanford led the way The map immediately brings up a good question. What do we do for ground wave comms? Another good question is, are they always ground wave, or are some of them veritical incidence skywave? I believe Stanford is mostly ground wave because moving the antenna a bit in the backyar...

Got the following data back from my rbn_telnet.py program this afternoon. It's not what the script was created for, but it's wound up being a nice use model: b'DX de VE6JY-#:   14057.5  KD0FNR         CW     5 dB  20 WPM  CQ      2254Z\r\n' b'DX de VE7CC-#:   14057.5  KD0FNR         CW     3 dB  21 WPM  CQ      2254Z\r\n' b'DX de W6BB-#:    14058.1  KD0FNR         CW     2 dB  21 WPM  CQ      2255Z\r\n' b'DX de VE6JY-#:   14058.1  KD0FNR         CW    10 dB  21 WPM  CQ      2255Z\r\n' Note that the same station, VE6JY has the rockmite coming in first at 5 dB on 14057.5 kHz at 2245Z and then at 10 dB one minute later on 14058.1. I had suspected there might be battery issues with...

I dropped the antenna this morning and all of a suddne, the RockMite's signal into Utah was back. This afternoon? Utah appeared again. We know why. First, in the morning, I didn't actually 'drop' the antenna, not to say I haven't before, but this time I lowered it on purpose to see what would happen. Andddddd when I did, the Utah SDR which we've been invisible to most of the day lately, found the RockMite immediately.  It's been kind of a pain disappearing from this station, because for the rest of the year, it provided a nice safety net. Is the radio working? I don't know, check the Utah SDR. The antenna's launch angle is supposed to increase when the antenna is lowered, so a hypothesis began to form—the ionosphere is 'too' high. Last night, the kid and I were able to test the hypothesis. We'd set the RockMite picokeyer up on beacon mode, and were listening to a number of SDRs in the other room in case anyone responded to our CQ calls ...

Google Chrome hasn't been letting me into the lgdc.uml.edu database, (maybe their certificate expired?) There's a way to tell 'curl' to get the information anyway. Up until a few days ago, I could retrieve data from the Pt. Arguello ionosonde using Now, I just get where the advanced button does not let me into the site anyway. So, I put curl to work with: curl --insecure "https://lgdc.uml.edu/common/DIDBGetValues?ursiCode=PA836&charName=MUFD,hmF2,hmF1&fromDate=2023.03.22&toDate=2023.03.23 and immediately got back the data I was looking for:

The ionosphere has been doing reallyfun things on the 20 meter amateur radio band the last two mornings. The Rockmite is 20 dB into North Carolina at 11:00 GMT! (In the dark.) The F2 layer of the ionosphere is 428 km up, and isn't supposed to be useful at 14058.4 MHz with an maximum Usable Frequency (MUF) of 13.36 MHz, and yet! I'm guessing the grey line near the receiving staions on the map can't hurt. I'm not hearing any stations sending the other direction, yet. Update 3/20/2023: I finally heard a station from South  Carolina this morning at about the same time, (ok, ok, it was more like 4:30... I slept in.) Sadly, this morning, my signal did not seem to be making the return trip as my spots were limited to Berkeley, locked soundly in the ground wave range from San Francisco. Interestingly, the ionogram for California showed conditions that might have supporoted the trip: They just didn't. For those curious, and new to ham radio, the app I use to determine how ...

 I'm finding out more about the ionosphere with respect to ham radio high frequency skip communications this week. Thankfully, I've finally found an easy to read ionosonde data site for California. Just as thankfully, I've found a few sites with information on how to read ionosondes and what the propagation processes involved are. The Point Arguello ionosonde is situated in southern California. It produces ionograms like this one every seven minutes or so There's an excellent site with more information on how to read the data And a pdf document from the Australian Government office of Radio and Space Services about how skip communications work .

 Why using pytest (or another framework) to test code routinely (as in every time code is added) saves bogs worth of time for developers.  I've found myself running away with adding new features to the reverse beacon network ( RBN )  mapping project over the last few days. It's been a lot of fun, and now there are prototype maps —for example —that show ionoshperic skip. It's been a LOT of fun, but I haven't been augmenting my documentation or testing for the project. So, this morning, I earnestly wrote myself a note to read back up on the importance of testing , then I  was slammed from my lofty testing heights back to the alley of  'banging out code' by inspiration for a shiny new feature , and I was off. Fortunately, the note in my journal acted as a positive reinforcment. As I started to write the new feature (animating maps via timestamps in Google Earth), I also popped open an existing pytest file , saved it under a new name, and started writing tests fo...