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Re: (meteorobs) Meteors by Radio
I understand the basics from reading articles in magazines and off
>the net but the one thing I don't have is an appropriate directional
>antenna. I have read that Radio Shack sells a Yagi antenna for US$20 but the
>guy at Radio Shack I talked to said they haven't carried them for years. I
>called around - I found one place that had a Yagi FM antenna for $60, which
>is more than I want to spend. Does anyone know of a source for cheap Yagi
>antennas or, better yet, a good reference on constructing an antenna? Or any
>other advice?
Alan
I have found the antenna to be non-critical. The only thing I think the
beam direction is usefull is for nulling out local interferance. I use a
cheap 3 element TV antenna that I got in an ace hardware store. I don't
think I spent over $30 U.S for it and a RS 10DB RF amp. I don;t detect with
FM however. I use SSB mode and use a soundcard program called FFTDSP. It
works great for visual display but am not sure yet if this setup lends
itself to an automated setup. Am still working on that part.
I you would like to join the IRC group tomorrow morning hear is the skinny:
As usual, there will be an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) session
about meteor observing this Saturday at 11am EST (which is also
16:00 UT). This time and day is aimed at all observers, but in
particular those residing in UK and Europe, for whom our other
sessions on Monday nights (8pm EST, 01:00 UT) are inconvenient.
To attend, download a copy of one of the many IRC "client
programs" (a good one for Windows is called "mIRC", and one for
the Mac is "IRCle": both are available as try-to-buy shareware
on the Internet). Once you have an IRC client on your computer,
connect to the server on "DALnet" known as: centurion.daldot net
After connecting to centurion.daldot net, you'll need to enter the
IRC command for joining a chat session: /join #namn
The "#namn" is the name of our meteor chat session. Good luck,
and we look forward to "seeing" you on the "#namn channel"!
Lew Gramer
owner-meteorobs@latrade.com
Co-Channel Operator of #namn
Internet Coordinator, N.A.M.N.
References: