(meteorobs) SNOTEL/SCAN - further info for radio meteor observers

Thomas Ashcraft ashcraft at heliotown.com
Mon Sep 2 13:39:19 EDT 2013


Hi Jay,

Well, you should be able to receive sporadic meteors every morning 
around dawn at 40.670 CW as a test no matter if there is an active 
shower or not.

Before putting a lot of work into it you might merely try a simple half 
wave dipole cut for 40 MHz.

You might also give 54.310 MHz CW a try.  This might require turning up 
your radio's gain.

All I use for receiving these frequencies is an old beat up yagi tv 
antenna which seems to work okay enough.

Whereas getting SNOTEL here in the west is pretty easy, I have not heard 
many reports of SCAN reception in the eastern US so I wish you well and 
look forward to any news.

Thomas

On 9/2/13 10:58 45000, Jay Salsburg wrote:
> Hello Thomas
>
> Now that NAVSPASUR is turned off, I will start experimenting with your
> suggestion to receive the 40.67 MHz SNOTEL carrier. I replaced my Space
> RADAR Antenna with a long vertical Whip and tuned my receiver to 40.669 MHz
> CW. At first glance, receive a sporadic monotonic low intensity line at 1200
> Hz. A few days of observation should tell me if I should invest time into
> creating a better Antennae. Thinking back, I should have done this during
> the Perseids. In my long backyard, oriented in East/West, I should be able
> to devise a vertically polarized Yagi about 50 feet long. The SNOTEL site is
> 180 miles away on a heading of 65 degrees.
>
>
> Jay Salsburg
>
>   -----Original Message-----
> From: meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org
> [mailto:meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ashcraft
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 4:23 PM
> To: Meteor science and meteor observing
> Subject: (meteorobs) SNOTEL/SCAN - further info for radio meteor observers
>
> Further information on the SNOTEL/SCAN meteor burst communications network:
>
> There are 100 kW master stations in five locations.  40.670 MHz CW
>
> 1 Boise Idaho
> 2 Dugway Proving Grounds Utah
> 3 Stoneville, Mississippi
> 4 Tipton, Missouri
> 5 Mt. Gilead, OH
>
> The much less powerful remote data stations (41.61 MHz CW) transmit hourly
> (top of the hour) as long as there is data to send.
>
> Here is a short sound specimen and spectrogram of the signal of the return
> transmitter:
> http://www.heliotown.com/SNOTEL_SCAN_return_signal.html
>
> Thomas Ashcraft  -  Heliotown  - New Mexico
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>



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