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Re: (meteorobs) RE: [WSVHF] 1999 Perseids

At 12:23 AM 1999-08-17 +0100, you wrote:
>I'm wondering if you're perception that there was not as much activity might
>be based on the fact that not many people were on the amateur bands looking
>for contacts.

Possibly, but I don't think so. There were a lot of impromptu skeds being
undertaken. The other major consideration to keep in mind is that the
number of reflections at 144 and higher is considerably less than at 100
MHz and below.

>I guess my point is that I find using TV carriers as beacons a much more
>reliable source for counting meteor bursts.dot because their signals are always
>there...and are powerful.

That may be, for a given path. One of the major problems I and a few others
noticed was that many folks seemed to ignore the fact that during the
predicted early peak hour, the radiant would be below the horizon; and
during the traditional peak hour, the radiant would favor only certain
paths. Many were attempting skeds over definitely-unfavorable paths for
that time frame. Some years ago, the level of understanding of the physics
involved was considerably higher because usually, one of the two guys
trying a sked would be experienced and understand what was going on, and so
tailor skeds with the unexperienced toward the more favorable times and
paths. That's not true today particularly with the internet since any Joe
can get any other to run a sked at almost any time, almost anywhere just by
showing up on one of Slapshot Bob's propagation pages.

Last year's Leonids certainly did not peak over North America, yet provided
much excitement even as unfavorable as the radiant position may have been.
In fact, however, several distance-frequency records were set or
challenged. Perhaps the sheer numbers of Leonids fireballs made up for the
unfavorable radiant position.

One thing to keep in mind is that several prominent visual observers also
believe that the Perseids meteor counts have decreased this last decade. My
reposting of the radio observations were an attempt to interest someone to
attempt the kind of analysis that was evidently performed upon the surprise
fireball display of the Leonids and which appeared to result in several
independent conclusions of filamentary structures. What I'm getting at is
that I'm wondering whether the Perseids may have cyclical filaments,
perhaps with peaks every few years, or maybe even longer, I have no idea.
1993 and 1997 were apparently decent years compared to others for North
America; whether that was due to favorable radiant positioning during the
majority of activity, I don't know. I suspect that may have been the case
as somebody, I forget who, mentioned a few days ago that next year, Eastern
Europe should be favored and I think they said North America would be
favored again in 2003.

So, I'm not convinced that the Perseids are actually dying; but I am
thinking that there are cyclical variations that I haven't heard anyone
mention as yet.

73, Steve K0XP
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