--- title: "We Asked To Use The Weather Weapon. They Sent Us A Form." dek: "The ionospheric research facility runs a public tour twice a year, publishes its transmission schedule, and takes experiment proposals from anybody. Our correspondent submitted one. It was rejected, on the record, with reasons — and an invitation to resubmit." kind: news (News) desk: Suppressed Science author: Dr. Ilse Vantongeren (fictional) published: 2026-07-10T10:00:00Z url: https://theyburied.com/article/haarp-open-day tags: HAARP, ionosphere, open day, transmission schedule genre: satire status: fiction — nothing in this story happened; every person, source and document is invented --- # We Asked To Use The Weather Weapon. They Sent Us A Form. *The ionospheric research facility runs a public tour twice a year, publishes its transmission schedule, and takes experiment proposals from anybody. Our correspondent submitted one. It was rejected, on the record, with reasons — and an invitation to resubmit.* The open day is on a Saturday in June, it is advertised on the facility's website four months in advance, and it has a car park. Two hundred and eleven people came. Our correspondent was one of them and paid the same nothing everyone else paid. ## What is published > **Figure:** Power, to scale — see https://theyburied.com/article/haarp-open-day The transmission schedule. This newspaper has archived it monthly since 2019, and it has never been retroactively edited in eighty-five months of checking — a fact worth more than any assurance, because it is checkable and we have been checking. The schedule gives campaign windows, frequencies, and the principal investigator's name and institution for each. Four slots this year are marked "reserved". We asked; we were told they are weather contingency; we have not been able to verify that independently and we are saying so. ## The proposal Anybody may propose an experiment. The form is on the website. Our correspondent submitted one in March, under her own name, with the affiliation field left blank because she has none. It asked for a 2.8 MHz heating campaign to test a specific and rather narrow question about artificial airglow. It was rejected in May. The assessment is printed below in full and is worth reading, because it does not reject her for being a journalist — it says so in terms — and because it tells her, specifically, what to do to succeed next time, which is to find a diagnostic partner, two of which it names. She is doing that. If a campaign happens, this newspaper will report it, including if it produces nothing. > We note the proposer is a journalist and record that this played no part in the assessment. We would rather she resubmitted than wrote about the rejection, though we accept she may do both. ## Who came to the open day Our correspondent talked to eleven of the two hundred and eleven and asked them all the same question: why are you here? Four were locals who come every year. Two were radio amateurs, one of whom has bounced signals off the array's artificially heated patch and had the QSL card in his jacket. Two were parents with children who wanted to see something large. One was a physics teacher. Two came because they believe the array is used for weather modification and wanted to look at it. Both were shown around by Dr. Bronwyn Adeyemi-Sato personally, for forty minutes, and asked her a great many pointed questions, and she answered all of them at length and without visible irritation, which our correspondent — who has been on the other end of many press offices — found remarkable enough to write down. "They asked good questions," Dr. Adeyemi-Sato said afterwards. "The one about power density was a genuinely good question and I was glad to be asked it, because the number is the answer and the number is public." ## The number The array radiates 3.6 megawatts. That is a lot for a transmitter and it is nothing at all for weather. A modest thunderstorm dissipates on the order of 10¹³ watts. The array is roughly seven orders of magnitude short, and the energy it does put up is deposited in a region of the atmosphere that has almost nothing in it, which is the entire reason the facility is useful for the ionospheric physics it exists to do. Dr. Adeyemi-Sato said she gives that comparison about forty times a year and has never once had anybody argue with the arithmetic. "They usually say: then why is it secret," she said. "And I say: it isn't, the schedule is on the website, you can come in June. And a surprising number of them come in June." ## Sources (invented) - Dr. Bronwyn Adeyemi-Sato, Facility scientist — Interviewed in person during the open day and again by telephone (27 June and 8 July 2026) - Eleven visitors, Named individually in our notes with consent — Interviewed on site (27 June 2026) - The campaign proposal committee, Written correspondence — This newspaper submitted a research proposal and publishes the rejection in full (March–May 2026) - Published transmission schedule, Public record — Archived by this newspaper monthly since 2019 (2019–2026) ## What we could not confirm - What is in the four campaign slots on the published schedule marked 'reserved'. We asked and were told they are held for weather contingency. We have not been able to check that independently. - Whether the published schedule is complete. We have archived it monthly for seven years and it has never been retroactively edited, which is evidence but not proof. ## Right of reply **The campaign proposal committee** (Rejected on 11 May 2026 with a written assessment. Published in full at the committee's suggestion.): > Proposal 2026-041 is not recommended for a campaign slot. > > The scientific question is well posed and the proposer's background is not an obstacle; we have allocated time to unaffiliated proposers on four occasions since 2015 and would do so again. > > The proposal fails on instrumentation. It requests a 2.8 MHz heating campaign with diagnostic support from a receiver network that the proposer does not have, has not costed, and cannot obtain within the campaign window. We would encourage resubmission with a named diagnostic partner. Several of the groups that could partner are listed on our website and two of them have unused capacity this year. > > We note the proposer is a journalist and record that this played no part in the assessment. We would rather she resubmitted than wrote about the rejection, though we accept she may do both. --- They Buried is a satirical newspaper. Every story, source, document and person in it is invented. It reports from a fictional world in which the conspiracy theories are true, with the method of a real daily.