A 1965 Electronics Magazine Article About Meteor Scatter

Denny - K0LGI -

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Jul 22, 2025, 3:22:02 PM7/22/25

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Messages by Meteor, October 18, 1965 Electronics Magazine - RF Cafe

Messages by Meteor

Shower and Sporadic Meteors

Meteor Trails

Physical Considerations

Signal Variations

Typical Meteor Scatter System

Experimental System

Phase Stability and Time Synchronization

Correlation Techniques

Bibliography

Rich Glassner

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Jul 23, 2025, 8:33:50 AM7/23/25

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Thank you Denny for the great article. The article raises questions that I would like to know more about. I would appreciate any help to these questions.

Are there any websites or other sources of information that show the statistics of sporadic meteors? I would like to know for non-shower sporadic meteors whether the quantity and quality (e.g. overdense/underdense ionizations) are increasing or decreasing over long periods of time and/or over seasonal periods? If a change in trend exists, what are believed to be the causes?

When looking at a strip chart with time on the horizontal axis and amplitude on the vertical axis, for example, what are the characteristics of sporadic-E on the chart that would allow me to know that I am not looking at meteor reflections? By listening to the audio for an hour or so I can easily identify the meteor reflections but am never sure when a period of sporadic-E might have set in.

Thanks,

Rich Glassner

Jefferson City, Mo.

Mike Otte

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Jul 23, 2025, 10:25:56 AM7/23/25

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Hello All,

This article is quite dated.

Current resources:

rmob.org

https://www.imo.net/

https://www.emeteornews.net/

Sporiadic rate changes daily and is called the diurnal. Rate increases as we come into the morning twilight because we are headed into the debris lying in the way of Earth as it orbits around the Sun. Rate is lowest in the evening when we are in the shadow of the earth's path.

There is seasonal changes too with more from summer to winter and less winter into spring

Sporiadic-E propagation is a problem for meteor counting and for me it causes Over counting because of almost continuous reflections mainly in June and December but of late with the active Sun, much more often including aurora.

I have been doing radio meteors for over 25 years and would be glad to share what I know and don't know.

Mike Otte w9ys

Northern IL

Denny - K0LGI -

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Jul 23, 2025, 12:47:59 PM7/23/25

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Indeed, Mike it is a vintage article about this subject however it does describe it from a different viewpoint. I have found similar older articles I have submitted links to this group about this subject in the past. Although they are also be considered 'vintage' they in general offer a historical perspective about this subject.

I have paused my meteor observations currently due the complete loss of my antennas designed for that purpose because of the 2020 Derecho. Now since the increase in solar flux I have shifted my interest mainly to the reporting of solar flares observed on HF.

The following links may be of some interest Rich where more interesting details are included by other authors or groups.

Included below are several informative and comprehensive links regarding radio detected meteor observations. They are the from the efforts of the American Meteor Society (AMS) http://www.amsmeteors.org/ and several others are from the International Meteor Organization (IMO) http://www.imo.net/