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Re: (meteorobs) Radio Observation of Meteors
Super,
I can see that I'm not in your league, I'm elated! Your (collective)
feedback has been encouraging, and leads me to ask: where this might be
taken at the amateur level? Some of the methods you speak of I'm not
familiar with (yet), and I've been in the dark with respect to research
done since McKinley, but if I get pointed in the right direction I think
I can keep my momentum up.
What is the likelyhood of coming up with a radio detection scheme for
amateurs, that is simple and cheap enough? Perhaps something compatible
with Christian Steyaert's data or beyond?
> Sync with LORAN or GPS--I think TAPR has a kit that will allow you to build
> a 10 MHz dsciplined oscillator that is synchronized to GPS/atomic time. The
> advantage of an AM code such as IRIG is that you can raise your timing
> precision by examining phase.
I'd like to look into this further.
Since the entire received burst contains
> phase information, you increase the number of points used to calculate time
> delay and improve your statistics considerably. If you used a binary phase
> code or a timing mark, you may have difficulty determining exactly when the
> transition occurred.
Understood.
>
> >
> > I was thinking of restraints of doing something like this within the
> >amateur radio bands, and within the budget of amateurs. In my case I
> >couldn't afford the power bill for a 25 kW transmitter :-)
>
> Sure you could! The one we used was a ham design--it was a 2.5 kW PEP amp
> run at a low duty cycle, yielding a PEAK power of 25 kW . . .
This I'm not clear on. I think that in Canada our peek power is capped
at well below 25 kW.
>
>
> Or, you could run several beacons in lower frequency band (28, 50, or 144
> MHz), each one at a a slightly different frequency and each of them runing
> a different time coding scheme. Colocate all beacons (5 beacons = 500 W!)
> and give each beacon its own antenna (duh).
OK, not that hard to do on VHF and up, if space permits.
>
> If you're interested in references on meteor radars, drop some email to my
> boss, Frank Djuth djuth@ixdot netcom.com He'll have the latest references,
> both in meteor radars for atmospheric study and for meteor astronomy.
If he won't mind, I'll drop him a note this week.
>
> 73,
>
> John
> KO6X
>
> PS We're working on a proposal to use HAARP as a meteor orbit radar. There
> are technical problems as HAARP cannot pulse as per their spec yet. In
> theory we'll be able to get 10 us pulses near 10 MHz running ?? MW of power
> and receive with a 16 receiver digital sysem . . . I'll keep you posted--we
> just started the software for the prototype (2 channel) receiver. The
> entire system will take a few years to get funded and running.
Thanks, I'll look forward to hearing more about it.
I would imagine that the low power of LEO's (low earth orbit)
satellites and their directive antenna wouldn't make them very suitable
for forward scatter meteor detection, would they?
Ron (in Gander)
>
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--
R & L Thompson, 9 Medcalf St., Gander, NF, Canada A1V 1R9
Tel (709) 256-1179, Fax (709) 256-8638, e-mail rlthompson@thezonedot net
Amateur Radio Station call VO1AV, FP5EK, VE1KM Grid Square GN28qw
Location 48 57'08" N 054 36'43" W,
Local time UTC - 2.5 hrs Summer, UTC - 3.5 hrs Winter
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