Newly Minted Ham Hopes His Celestial Concert is Not HAARP’S Final Opus
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Newly Minted Ham Hopes His Celestial Concert is Not HAARP’S Final Opus TAGS: 30-acre antenna farm, air force, Alaska Sen Lisa, Auroral Research Program, HAARP, interior Alaska hams, UAF Geophysical Institute, vintage radio gear 06/19/2014 Not long before the US Air Force notified Congress in May that it planned to dismantle the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program — better known as HAARP — a researcher at the unique and controversial facility near Gakona, Alaska, briefly turned its ultra-high power HF transmitter into a celestial musical instrument. That “music of the spheres” could turn out to be HAARP’s swan song. The Air Force has told lawmakers that keeping HAARP in operation would not be a good use of its research funds. In April, when he orchestrated HAARP’s turn on the musical stage, Chris Fallen, now KL3WX — he got his Technician ticket on May 5 — was training as a HAARP operator on the outside chance that his alma mater, the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), might take over the sprawling plant. As a UAF grad student, Fallen wrote his thesis on HAARP, inspired by a 2005 visit to a HAARP open house. Now a UAF assistant professor of space engineering, Fallen is distressed that he might not be able to continue his investigations. But don’t look for Maestro Fallen to take the HAARP Farewell Tour on the road just yet. Luxembourg Effect As NPR’s “All Things Considered” news magazine reported on June 10, Fallen used HAARP’s 3 GW transmitter and 30-acre antenna farm in April to create music that literally came from above. Employing what is known as the Luxembourg Effect, in which the ionosphere serves as a heavenly mixing device for radio signals on different frequencies, Fallen transmitted separate pieces of music directly skyward from HAARP. In his report, “Bye-Bye To The Home Of A Favorite Internet Conspiracy Theory,” NPR’s Geoff Brumfield said the Luxembourg Effect blended the different pieces together. As Fallen explained, “These two different musical performances were essentially mixed in space.” The result was an otherworldly “New Age” type concerto reminiscent of a glass harp composition, no pun intended. Students visiting UAF composed two “complementary pieces” of music for the experiment, according to a report in The Anchorage Press. Fallen explained on NPR that he transmitted one of the pieces at 3.25 MHz, the other at 4.25 MHz. The ionosphere reflected the resulting “mix tape” of sorts back to Earth for the listening pleasure of Fallen and his, uhhh, co-conspirators. Appointment with Wrecking Ball on Hold The Air Force told Congress that it intended to call in the wrecking ball as early as this summer, but things now are in limbo. Built in 1990 at a cost of nearly $300 million, HAARP’s immediate trajectory toward the scrap heap has been paused, while the Air Force and UAF attempt to work out a deal to have the university take over HAARP — lock, stock, and conspiracy theories. According to NPR affiliate KUAC, UAF Geophysical Institute Director Bob McCoy has confirmed that the school has been “pursuing the possibility of taking over HAARP,” although discussions are still underway. In the meantime, KUAC said, researchers from around the world have signed petitions and letters of support to keep HAARP running. KUAC reported that Alaska Sen Lisa Murkowski forwarded the expressions of support to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Murkowski’s spokesman emphasized that HAARP’s future hinges on funding; it would cost on the order of $5 million a year to keep HAARP going. If the end really is near, though, it’s been coming for a while now. Last July HAARP’s Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) program manager James Keeney told ARRL that the facility had been shut down while the search for a new prime contractor was underway. Its budget essentially zeroed out, HAARP subsequently reopened to conduct some research campaigns under government contract. Invaluable Asset Larry Ledlow, N1TX, of Fairbanks, Alaska, told ARRL in 2013 that HAARP’s ionosonde and riometer data have been “invaluable, especially being more or less local, to understand current conditions in the high latitudes.” He said data from other sites “simply do not accurately reflect the unique propagation we endure here.” Eric Nichols, KL7AJ, author of Radio Science for the Radio Amateur and articles in QST — said the loss of HAARP would be “a great loss to interior Alaska hams and many others.” Fallen wholeheartedly echoed those sentiments. “Professionally speaking, the shutdown of HAARP [would be] very disappointing and damaging to fundamental upper-atmosphere and radio sciences in the immediate and long terms,” he told ARRL on June 18. Losing HAARP, he said, would also mean doing away with the array of other on-site instruments, such as a UHF radar, magnetometers, a seismometer, classic and imaging riometers, ionosonde, all-sky cameras, and GPS Total Electron Content (TEC) receivers. Data from many of those instruments is collected...