Leonids 1999 - Meteor Scatter Reception

Frequency: 55.25 MHz
Transmitter: TV signal from Liege Bol d'air, Belgium.
Receiver: Todmorden, UK.
Path:  Approx 500kM.

Reception Method

Zenith pointing wire turnstile with ground as reflector. AR8200 scanner receiver, upper sideband mode, 55.429 MHz, audio output to PC soundcard. TV carrier received in 30Hz bandwith with mean power detection. Signal strength is normalised by the mean level from a second nearby 30Hz channel selected to receive only background noise.

Charts

All charts are derived from a 300 second integration per sample point.

Mean signal strength over 44 hour period, GIF, 10kb.
Mean signal during the event, GIF, 10kb.

Samples

The receiver audio passband contains two carriers, one at about 94Hz and the other at 1250Hz. These appear to be distinct co-channel transmitters as their individual pings do not coincide.

Comments

Long and strong pings quickly merged into a continuous M-S signal, so an attempt to count individual pings was abandoned in favour of the using the received signal strength.