Detecting meteor ion trail reflections with an interferometer

[David L, N5OIQ]

Hello everyone,

As a by-product of my low frequency interferometer work at 55 MHz, I was curious what could be done with signals from analog TV channel 2 video carriers reflected by meteor ion trails.  Details are in the attached file.

David

[Thomas Ashcraft]

David,

Interesting report. Thanks for posting.

Just curious, have you tried analog channel 3 at 61.250 MHz CW even
though your antenna is for 55 MHz? Where I am near Santa Fe New Mexico I
get a constant carrier signal at 55.250 MHz CW so I work mostly at
61.250 MHz CW and 67.250 MHz CW.

Meteor ionization is pretty dynamic.

Thomas

[David L, N5OIQ]

Thomas,

Yes, I can see lots of activity at 61.25 MHz also and it looks very much like what I see at 55.25 MHz.  I've seen your spectrograms before and they look really nice.  My antenna is sky noise limited at 61.25 MHz but it has a radiation pattern that favors the zenith so my returns are not that strong.

I think my interferometer is generally giving me some info on the size of the the ion trail with more phase loops indicating a larger angular extent of the ion cloud.  Good range information from multiple stations would be interesting to understand this better.

David