Leonid meteor shower

I rousted my kids out of bed a few years ago to watch the Leonids. It turned out to be a spectacular show. I wasn't expecting much because of the streetlight directly in front of my house, but the brightness of the streaks were incredible.

Thanks for the reminder!
 
Forget watching. I'll be in the basement of my house online at pingjockey.net and have the meteor scatter ham radio set up, running, and bouncing signals off the ionized trails. Last Leonid I ALMOST set the world's distance record on 144MHz Meteor Scatter comms with 25 watts. I had a partial exchange of information with a guy outside of LA
 
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You can bounce signal off meteor trails? That is absolutely amazing! How do you avoid the E layer? (I assume that would be idealized.)
 
Richard said:
You can bounce signal off meteor trails? That is absolutely amazing! How do you avoid the E layer? (I assume that would be idealized.)
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We use a software program developed by Joe Taylor called WSJT. Then code up the signal that is transmitted using four audio tone that would go into a three tone character. A short string of characters is then strung to gether and repeated very fast. Each person takes a period to transmit, usually 30 seconds, and both station have to have had their timing synchonized to avoid data collisions. We use WWV's atomic clock to do that part. Then to call the comm or QSO legal we have to exchange callsigns, a signal report, and verify that we heard the signal report from the other person.

On the comm to CA I had the guys callsign and he had mine but we could not catch another rock that allowed us to communciate. It was really frustrating. I have worked over 100 maidenheads grids using this technique and 22 states.

Here is a link to some of the records that people hold
http://www.qsl.net/pnwvhfs/scores/distance_records.htm
 
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I'm going to have to break down and get a new 2 meter all mode, or fix my OLD Kenwood TS-700A and try some of this one of these days. Probably a better idea to get a new radio, but selling the XYL (who thinks 'stupidradio' is one word) on fixing the old one will probably be easier. :D
 
Ghery said:
I'm going to have to break down and get a new 2 meter all mode, or fix my OLD Kenwood TS-700A and try some of this one of these days. Probably a better idea to get a new radio, but selling the XYL (who thinks 'stupidradio' is one word) on fixing the old one will probably be easier. :D
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We are getting into some serious thread creep but...

Yeah if you have not been fooling around with some of the cool weak signal digital stuff on VHF you have got to try. The JT44 mode of WSJT for terrestrial is great. You can pull signals out of a band you thought was shut down.

At night during VHF contests we set up skeds with other station to add some poitns and get some multipliers. I have been asked to run the WSJT station in FSK441 ans JT44 on K9NS but I had to turn 'em down as I was out of town. But those guys have really raked up the points in a couple of limited VHF contests. Of course they kick-butt in multi-op unlimited on HF!

I have not been on HF in two years and don't miss it. The only time on FM for VHF anymore is to make sure my echolink is up and running and to control op it a bit.
 
Here is a paper I wrote when Joe first get his software out and a presentation based on some of his previous work and some of mine. Joe has allowed me and others to source his material without violating his copyright. In fact he likes it to be passed around as he does this stuff for fun and not profit.

It goes into a bit more detail about how the software works and what the theory ooperation is. As a person whi has worked with digital communications for several decades now I can really apreciate the simple elgance in Joe's system design.
 
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Tonight I'm on my way a couple hundred miles north for a meteor/aurora viewing party in Talkeetna. The auroras are supposed to be active, and it's supposed to be CLEAR to boot! Yay!

The downside? Oh, it's, like, zero to ten below out there tonight. *brrrrrrr* I think it'll be one of those go-outside-for-five-minutes-and-then-back-to-the-Scrabble-game kinds of things.

--Kath
 
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