Several East Bay Amateur Radio Club hams will open up their shacks so you can listen for the eclipse's effects on the ionosphere and radio propagation.   Even if you're unlicensed you can operate and help us rack up contest points.

Please RSVP via https://www.meetup.com/East-Bay-Amateur-Radio/events/238161630/ to get the location.

HAMSCI: Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation is organizing a crowd-sourced data collection project to help analyze the effects of the August 21st 2017 solar eclipse on ionospheric radio wave propagation. Ionospheric paths will change throughout the day as the moon passes across the sun and different portions of the Earth’s ionosphere are affected. The Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) and similar systems like PSK Reporter and WSPRnet will be used to collect data about open propagation paths and signal-to-noise ratios. The concurrent Solar QSO Party (kind of a contest, but not exactly) will help encourage as many radio contacts as possible that day. Logs from the “contest” will be uploaded along with the RBN data. All of the collected data will be made available to academic institutes for analysis so we’re hoping to collect as much data as possible. There are many ways hams can participate in this data collection: being a node on the RBN using a standard receiver or an SDR, working the contest, etc.  Check out Page 82 of the February ARRL QST magazine for more information.

Also see: 

http://ebarc.org

http://hamsci.org

http://www.arrl.org/news/rsvp-for-the-seqp

http://eng.umb.edu/~eclipsemob/ for vlf receiver/antenna designs