Eclipse gives radio enthusiast research opportunity

Like many people, Mike Naruta will be outside Monday afternoon safely watching the solar eclipse.

“I’ll be out there with my grandchildren,” said the Port Huron Township resident.

But he also will be listening to the eclipse.

The long-time amateur radio enthusiast and electronics engineer will be one of many ham operators participating in an experiment to determine the solar eclipse’s effect on the Earth’s ionosphere.

More:'Great American Eclipse' is much anticipated

He will be monitoring radio transmissions from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“They have transmitters there, and they send out a standard time signal on a standard frequency,” he said.

The Earth’s ionosphere reflects the signal but “when the moon passes over the Earth, it interrupts the photons from the sun, solar radiation, plus it interrupts the solar wind,” Naruta said.

“The wind is a stream of particles that’s always coming out of the sun.”

He and others expect the interruption will cause a disturbance that will be detected by ham radio operators.

“There are going to be stations all over the planet monitoring the strength and the frequency of those standard transmitters,” he said.

NASA and other agencies will have telescopes and other instruments pointed at the Sun during the duration of the eclipse, “but this is outside of NASA,” Naruta said. “This is amateur scientists.”

He said the amateurs are figuratively going boldly where no one has gone before.

"The ionosphere is normally in a state of turmoil,” Naruta said. “The sudden stop of that energy, we don’t know what it’s going to do.”

He said he’s been interested in radio since 1961 when, like many of his generation, he heard the scratchy sounds of a crystal radio set through a single earphone.

“I was experimenting with crystal sets at Lakeport Elementary School,” he said.

He said he likes finding out things.

“It’s the discovery aspect to it,” Naruta said. “It’s not the moments when you go, ‘Eureka!’

“It’s the moment when you’re looking at the data and you say, ‘That’s funny.’"

He said he expects a year or so before the amateur researchers will be able to draw any conclusions from the grand experiment

Contact Bob Gross at (810) 989-6263 or rgross@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobertGross477.