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Re: (meteorobs) (no subject)

At 08:37 11/18/98 -0700, crsvarc wrote:
>>
>>>Is there someway we could tap and use this energy?
>>Yep.  By bouncing radio waves off the ionized train they leave behind them!
>
>I am afraid I do not see how that would "tap and use this energy"?  Am I
>missing something?

Well, yes and no.  It's partly tongue-in-cheek, like trying to make cement
out of foo-foo dust.

But I guess it's also wishful thinking.  Some of us have used the ionized
trains for the reflection (refraction) of radio waves since the early '50s.
 Before the advent of our communications satellites, the military used this
method for communications out of the auroral-zone arctic area (White
Alice).  More "domestic" parts of the govt use it (or at least were using
it until recently) for the remote reporting of unmanned snow and weather
stations.  And some fleets of trucks use meteor trail communications.  But,
since Amateur Radio Operators more or less "discovered" it, developed it,
and have been the primary users of it (like most of the other means of
propagation of radio waves!), we've always sort of considered meteor
scatter to be primarily one of "our" more esoteric means of propagation.

But then, consider the energy it takes to ionize a patch of the upper
atmosphere!  The radiation from the sun does it.  The solar wind does it
(wish we could get a good radio aurora this far south again).  The
government has launched a few rockets to release barium and produce a
glowing cloud for a short period.  Unfortunately (or maybe, fortunately),
these things take a lot more energy than is available to most of us!

And yet, these little grains of sand are moving with such a velocity that
they leave an ionized train behind them!  And if the ionization is dense
enough (as it *often* was a couple of mornings ago), it can reflect VHF
radio waves almost as tho it were a metal cylindar up there!

So, to "harness" their kinetic energy and use it - I don't think so.  (Humm
- Could we design a Get-Away Special for NASA, consisting of some 12-gauge
#10 shotgun shells, to fire one at a time, producing our own brief shower
upon request????)

But knowing when the peaks of the major showers are likely to be (or to use
an extremely high data rate, as with High Speed CW, and just use sporadic
meteors), we can then utilize their released energy for communications
during that time.  
For more on all this, see the W6/PA0ZN Web site, URL
http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ws1_15.html 
and follow the many hyperlinks.

But I'm afraid that's about the best we can do concerning actually using
these tiny invaders from outer space.

Shelby, W8WN - EM77bq
w8wn@ne.infidot net

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