A $10,000 grant to the University of Scranton, from the Frankford Radio Club (FRC)in Pennsylvania, will support the development of a contest dashboard that will leverage the popularity of amateur radio operator contests to benefit science, technology, students and Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) community members.

Through the grant, a team of university students, faculty, and FRC 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 grant will fund Scranton University student researcher, Owen Ruzanski, KD3ALD, a first-year computer engineering major, for the summer and fall 2025 semesters to help develop the contest dashboard and is expected to conclude in the spring semester of 2026.

University of Scranton physics professor Nathaniel Frissell, Ph.D, W2NAF, said through the project, he hopes the University’s W3USR Amateur Radio Club members, present and future, will become active radio contesters.

“We are already of ahead of schedule for this project,” said Dr. Frissell. “This past weekend we hosted students from W3USR and the Frankford Radio Club to take part in a little contesting. We made over 400 QSO’s worth over 250,000 contest points.”

Ray Sokola, K9RS, past president the Frankford Radio Club, said that 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.