(meteorobs) Greetings - Space Radar reciever here

[James Beauchamp]

Greetings all.  Just wanted to do a quick hello and introduction from a newbie.  I'm a radio engineer and was always intrigued by Stan Nelson's work.  I live about 60 nm NE of the Kickapoo transmitter site and wondered what I would "see" if a staion similar to Mr. Nelson's was set up.  Over the recent holiday break I put together a homebrew 7 element beam and an ICOM PCR-1000 radio for the Geminids, and was amazed at the performance.  A few more nights working with SpectrumLab and it worked like a charm.  The Geminids was a wonderful experience from the radio perspective. 
 
I put together a photo album for all my radio FB friends at: 
 
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026604&id=1122357299&l=f49dcbb49c
 
There are plots of Gemined "probables", as well as some other interesting things.  Satellites reflect very well, and I can predict them using Orbitron with medium accuracy.  Every now and then something really cool sweeps by.  I think I got the moon one night as well, but am not really sure.
 
The main advantage at my location is high return signal strength due to the rather short distance to the station.  Of course, the main disadvantage is the same.  Every high altitude jet between me and Kickapoo will nearly saturate the receiver, so it isn't as clean as Stan's.
 
I'm slowly working on "Phase 2" - an addition of a cavity filter and an EMU-0202 soundcard (Both installed last week), a helical filtered preamplifier, and a better antenna.  The filter reduced the noise substantially and the soundcard increased the digitizing performance.  Maybe someday I can get it fed to an audio server.  Maybe I can work that for this year's Leonids.
 
I enjoy seeing the posts from the global friends.
 
Cheers,
 
James Beauchamp  K5YJ
Oklahoma City