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Re: (meteorobs) Radio meteor rates high - anyone observe this?
At 07:48 PM 05/20/98 -0300, you wrote:
>Hello Observers'
>
> Yesterday May 19, between 1400-1800 UT I detected many radio pings
>and was wondering if any other radio meteor observers' heard an increase?
Michael, my daily schedule partner could not make it today so I did not
personally note radio meteor activity. But several other radio amateurs did
conduct other schedules on primarily east-west paths between about 1000Z
and 1400Z, and thought that today was a fairly poor one for them. Actually,
radio meteor activity at 144 MHz in the early morning hours has been very
poor since about the second week of April compared to the weeks before
then. In other words, while February and March are traditionally considered
to be the lowest meteor activity months of the year, we believe that until
the second week of April, activity was actually comparable to January and
even most of December. In contrast, the sky appeared to stop falling in the
middle of April and activity has still not seemed to return to really
usable levels although the month of May has been an improvement.
But I also have no real meteor counts to substantiate any of this, just the
opinions of a number of hams who have been actively testing the meteors
fairly consistently for some months. Our opinion could easily be skewed
because of our fairly high frequency of observed meteor reflections.
Clear skies,
SteveH
Shrewsbury Mass.
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