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Re: (meteorobs) Re: Are Sporadics Constant?
John, Bob Lunsford's excellent reply pretty much answers your question: in order
to begin to discern the presence of distinct showers - or by the same token to
ferret out low-amplitude variations in Sporadic rates - you need LOTS of data.
As Bob said, there are others on this list who may be doing data gathering very
similar to yours, and they'd be able to far much more detailed and authoritative
answers to your questions, but here's my (very amateur) take on this...
To get an idea of why and roughly how much of a large sample is needed to find
such patterns, think of what a system like yours measures: basically, a single
distribution graph of time vs. number and duration of reflections. Finesse this
graph into a continuous function from time to the ordinal space: Distinguishing
exactly what combination of continuous "signals" and narrower "impulses" can be
superposed to accurately approximate this continuous function necessitates that
your sample cover an area of the time domain that's at least some multiple of
the "wavelength" (duration) of the longest signal you're looking for - in this
case, the annual variation in Sporadic rates!
And as both Kim and Bob indicated (and hey, none of the three of us are even
radio observers! ;>), this sample must probably be based on just what is
gathered from your PARTICULAR instrumentation, or at least one which is very,
very similar to yours: this is because of the difficulty of measuring and
quantifying relative sensitivities of different radio setups, I understand.
Hope all this blathering from us NON-experts helps, John! Now if the REAL
experts weigh in, you should get an even better answer. :)
E-free skies!
Lew Gramer
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