IITC Newsletter Vol 1 No 2 : 18 July 2001 (Corrected)
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All...

Welcome to the second newsletter for the ionospheric tomography group (more on 
the group name later).  We have some new names on the list, so if you are 
keeping you own local list for the group you may want to update it.  As always, 
if you know of someone who we have excluded from the list who should be on it, 
please let me know their name and e-mail address and I'll add them on.  Also, if 
you receive this newsletter more than once, please let me know so I can prune 
out multiple entries in my list.

I have started numbering these newsletters so that you can keep track of which 
one's you've received.  The e-mail system is quite fallible, so in the future if 
you receive newsletter number 5 and you never received numbers 3 and 4 let me 
know and I'll bring you up to date.

Now for the news:

1.  Group name.  

I kicked off this discussion by the proposal of "International Ionospheric 
Tomography Community" as our group's name.  Ed and I have had offline 
discussions with Len Kersley about this, and Len feels that we may want to avoid 
use of the word "ionosphere" for reasons pertinent to the UK STP community.  So 
far, we have the following suggestions:

   International Ionospheric Tomography Community
   International Aeronomic Tomography Community
   Tomographic Imaging Group

For now, we're going to just stick with the first (IITC) and solicit suggestions 
from the group.  As Len put it:

>Maybe we should just place the name on hold until someone comes up with
>an inspired suggestion or we grow into some particular form of useage.

2.  Coordinated data-collection dates.

In the first newsletter we specified the first set of dates on which we will all 
try to maximize our data collection (19/20 September 2001).  Len Kersley was 
tasked to decide on the next set of dates, and here is his decision:

I was charged to select a period towards the end of the year for our second 
coordinated campaign.  I suggest we choose 12/13 December 2001.  12 December is 
a Priority World Day with 13 December a Regular World Day. Both dates are  Dark 
Moon Geophysical Days (important for supporting optical experiments) and are 
also Incoherent Scatter Coordinated Observation Days.

3.  Workshop planning.

Gary Bust (University of Texas at Austin) volunteered to work on this issue.  I 
will quote him on the status (Gary asked to tell everyone that this is very 
preliminary):

Farzad (Kamalabadi) and I have been kicking around holding the CIT conference 
around the U of Illinois Champaign.  He says there is a very nice 
retreat/conference center off in some woods, or large park  or something, that 
would be a very relaxing place.  And he is willing to hold it. Another option 
would be the conference center in Chicago, but I do not like that idea as much.  
My guess, is whomever decides to host, we will as a group need to encourage 
onr/afosr/nsf to provide some sponsorship. I still think next spring would be 
agood time. What do you think? if it seems possible, i will discuss  it with 
farzad again - and we can release it to the IITC.

Ed Fremouw suggested an alternative which we have not yet had a chance to 
coordinate with Gary (who is presently on vacation).  We might try to hold a 
workshop in conjunction with the following URSI symposium:

THIRD URSI COMMISSION G INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON THE HIGH LATITUDE IONOSPHERE

The Symposium will be held at the Geophysical Institute of the University of 
Alaska-Fairbanks and lodging will be available at Hotels in Fairbanks and in 
Dormitories of the University. Dates of the meeting are May 15 through 17,2002.

Ed and I will pass this along to Gary.  If you have suggestions or comments on 
this, please pass them to Gary as well <gbust@arlut.utexas.edu>.

4.  Note from Paul Bernhardt.  

Most of you may have received this note from Paul regarding launch of a new 
satellite with a beacon on-board, but I'm including it here for those of you not 
on Paul's list:

   To the International Ionospheric Tomography Community (IITC)

   PICOsat will be launched on 31 August 2001 into a circular orbit at 67 degree 
   inclination.  The mission orbit is 800 20 km circular, 67 0.3 degrees 
   inclination.   The CERTO beacon on PICOsat will be transmitting CW on 150.012 
   and 400.032 MHz.  Due to power limitations, the beacon will be off some of the 
   time.  I am requesting the latitudes and longitudes of ground stations of those 
   who will be recording TEC or scintillations from the dual frequency beacon.  
   Please send me the receiver locations so that we can schedule the beacon to be 
   on over your sites.

   Sincerely, Paul Bernhardt

Jim Secan