On August 21 between roughly 16:00 - 20:00 UTC there will be a total solar eclipse over the United States and part of the Atlantic Ocean north of the South American continent. The solar eclipse will affect the ionosphere, and it will be interesting to study the effects it will have on VLF, MF, and HF radio propagation. The ARRL and HamSCI have set up various projects for hams and shortwave listeners to partake in.
A project of the ARRL, called Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP), has its objective described as:
"to flood the airwaves with contacts, all measured by the automated receiver networks of the Reverse Beacon Network, PSKReporter, and WSPRNet. When those observations are combined with the logs from individual stations, the result will be one of the largest ionospheric experiments ever performed"
The solar eclipse will probably have little to no affect on radio propagation in Europe, but I'm planning during the eclipse on transmitting 200 mW WSPR beacons on 30 or 20m, to catch any unusual effects, might there be any. Maybe towards the end of the solar eclipse, paths to the US or South America will be enhanced?
The shadow path of the eclipse and local and UTC times of the beginning and end of the eclipse can be found on: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2017-august-21.
More information and interesting articles on amateur radio during the eclipse can be found on the following webpages:
http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter?issue=2017-07-20#toc05
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QST/This%20Month%20in%20QST/August2017/Silver.pdf
http://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclipse
http://www.hamsci.org/seqp
http://eng.umb.edu/~eclipsemob/
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| Shadow path of the solar eclipse. Watch the animation here. Source: timeanddate.com. |
Addendum 17.08.2017
Here's an interesting article on the Sky & Telescope site:
“Observe” August’s Eclipse with Your AM Radio
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