[time-nuts] Fwd: [hpsdr] SDR experiment for the solar eclipse

[jimlux]

On 8/3/17 12:10 PM, John Ackermann N8UR wrote:
> This is a little off-topic, but thought some of the group might be
> interested... so please forgive the interruption.
>
Here's a time-nuts connection
some ionosphere scientists I've been working with suggest that you sync 
your SDR and make it receive ionosonde transmissions.  These are 
precisely timed to start at the top of the minute (hence the utility of 
a decent clock). They also have well characterized transmit power and 
pattern.

There are open source implementations of chirpsounder receivers for 
GNURadio and for platforms like USRPs.
Juha Vierinen at Univ of Tromso, Norway has been very active in this.

https://hackaday.com/author/jvierine/

http://www.sgo.fi/~j/gnu_chirp_sounder/


> John
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: [hpsdr] SDR experiment for the solar eclipse
> Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 15:07:57 -0400
> From: John Ackermann N8UR <jra at febo.com>
> To: FMT-nuts at yahoogroups.com, HPSDR list <hpsdr at lists.openhpsdr.org>
>
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> I've been working with the "HamSci" group to set up an experiment for
> the solar eclipse: wideband recording of several HF bands before,
> during, and after the eclipse to look for propagation changes (or
> anything else that happens).  All are welcome to participate in the
> experiment, and this is a *perfect* application for our SDRs!
>
> Here's the HamSci web page:
> http://hamsci.org/2017-eclipse-hf-wideband-recording-experiment
>
> Various SDRs and programs have wideband recording capability.
>
> Radios that support the HPSDR "old protocol" (which include Hermes-based
> boards as well as the Red Pitaya and possibly others) can do an even
> better trick: they can record multiple slices of the HF band
> simultaneously, thanks to work by Tom McDermott N5EG.
>
> Hermes can do 4 receivers (tested), Mercury/Metis/Atlas systems should
> handle 3 (not tested), and the Red Pitaya can support 6 (tested).  This
> means that we can record most of the 80M band, and all of 40, 30, and
> 20M, in one gulp to look for effects of the eclipse -- frequency shift,
> propagation enhancement/reduction, noise floor, etc.
>
> I've written a Gnuradio .grc program that used N5EG's driver to record
> multiple receivers.  By default it's configured for four receivers on
> 80/40/30/20M, but that's easy to change.  I'll be posting that software
> to the TAPR github at https://github.com/TAPR as soon as we've done a
> bit more testing.
>
> This software runs on Linux and may work on Windows (I haven't had a
> chance to try, but Gnuradio has been ported to Windows).  Recording 4
> 384kHz channels does take some computing horsepower and uses a lot of
> disk space -- about 3MB per receiver per second.  My prior-generation i7
> machine with solid state drive seems to handle it OK.
>
> If you're interested in participating in this experiment, please (a)
> check out the HamSci web page; (b) check the ttps://github.com/TAPR in a
> day or two to grab the software and docs; and (c) feel free to contact
> me directly with any questions.
>
> 73,
> John N8UR
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