Grant Boosts Ham Radio Science and Fun

A $10,000 grant from the Frankford Radio Club will support the development of a contest dashboard by University of Scranton students and physics faculty members that will be used by students and amateur radio operators including some who have served as citizen scientists for space research projects led by Scranton physics professor Nathaniel Frissell, Ph.D. Through the project, Dr. Frissell hopes the University’s W3USR Amateur Radio Club members, present and future, will become active radio contesters.
“The amateur radio contesters are one of the most enthusiastic subset of ham radio operators, and participants span a range of ages from teenagers to over 90,” said Ray Sokola, past president of the 100-plus-year-old Frankford Radio Club, which is centered near the Borough of Alburtis in Lehigh County and covers a radius that includes parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and other adjacent states. In addition to expanding interest in ham radio and radio contesting, Sokola hopes the grant will continue the tradition of scientific contributions made by amateur radio operators over the past century.
A lifelong ham radio operator now in his 70s, Sokola was among the first engineers to work on cellphone technology during his career at Motorola. He said ham radio operators have made numerous contributions to technology and science as they tried to understand and improve radio frequency communications, which is often relied on for crisis communications during natural disasters.
“Ham radio competitions actually grew out of ham radio operators trying to improve emergency communication and keep their skills sharp during non-emergency time periods,” said Sokola, who explained contests for amateur radio operators include challenges to contact as many stations as possible during a set period of time, as well as ‘DXing,’ or challenges to make contact with distant ham radio stations, or a combination of both.
Dr. Frissell sees radio contesting as a way of engaging more students on campus and people in the region - especially the next generation of amateur radio enthusiasts.
“There is a community educational component to this project, in addition to the academic research and development components,” said Dr. Frissell, principal researcher for this grant, who noted the University’s new state-of-the-art ham radio station in the Loyola Science Center is already open to Scranton area community members each Thursday, from 7 to 9 p.m. The grant will allow for further outreach with the Scranton-area community.
Sokola echoes that hope to expand interest in amateur radio and radio contesting, noting that the skillset developed through computer gaming transfers well to radio competitions.
Through the grant, a team of University students, faculty and Frankford Radio Club members, along HamSCI community members, will collaborate to develop a real-time Contesting/DXing Dashboard for the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station (PSWS). The PSWS is a modular, ground-based system that measures space weather impacts on the Earth’s ionosphere. The system was distributed to a network of ham radio operators developed by Dr. Frissell through a 2019 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant and support from NASA, Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) and others. The Frankford Radio Club grant will fund a University student researcher, Owen Ruzanski of Shohola, a first-year computer engineering major, for the summer and fall 2025 semesters to help develop the contest dashboard.
“While the HamSCI PSWS network has and continues to enjoy great scientific success and support, relatively little work has been done to make this a valuable tool for real-time amateur radio applications, such as contesting, DXing and public service,” said Dr. Frissell. “Ideally, the PSWS network should equally benefit both the amateur radio and professional scientific communities, as this is a core objective of the HamSCI initiative.”
Dr. Frissell said the Contesting and DXing Dashboard would also aid amateur ham radio operators in understanding the high-frequency propagation happening at their local stations in real-time.
In addition to grant support, members of the Frankford Radio Club will meet with students in Dr. Frissell's advanced, 400-level Communications Systems course and with members of the University’s W3USR Amateur Radio Club to introduce them to contests and DXing.
The project will begin in the spring 2025 semester and is expected to conclude in the spring semester of 2026.