(meteorobs) Radio meteor detection on DTV frequencies

[Paul Goelz]

Folks,

I have been playing with a low cost Software Defined Radio using a 
$20 digital TV receiver USB dongle.  Poking around the local DTV 
frequencies looking at a 2MHz swath, I noticed that there was a 
significant residual carrier even though the transmission is digital.

So today I tried using the carrier of a digital TV transmission to 
detect meteors.  I'm near Detroit, and listening on the carrier 
frequency of each unoccupied channel I found one at 192.310 MHz 
(tuned to 192.309 USB) that seemed to have a bit of flutter on it (as 
opposed to a steady tone on some others that could be leakage from 
local cable TV).  Plotting it for a while in Spectrum Lab showed 
quite a few airplanes but no meteors (yet).  Understandable because 
the airplanes were weaker than they are at 55MHz.  Assume the meteors 
are as well at that frequency.  And the antenna is a 2M ham antenna, 
so it is nowhere near optimum for 192MHz.

But this is progress.

Paul

Paul Goelz
pgoelz at comcast.net
Rochester Hills, MI
www.pgoelz.com