Meteor Scatter

The recent Geminid meteor shower got me wondering whether I could hear anything with my current, rather lowly setup, having pretty much failed with satellites (that's another story...) so I set to to discover information on where the action is

It is not that easy to find, of course! http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-meteor-scatter.htm is quite informative on gear if not frequencies. So, having read and digested that I then went looking for where the skeds are arranged

Every web page points you to pingjockey, but as far as I can see nearly everything, if not everything, is US based. Then there's on4kst's pages. These are used by Europeans. Once logged in you'll find pages with QRGs on.

But in the end, I heard activity using the good old fashioned route of rotating the large knob on the front and listening. 144.370 seems to be used as a calling channel, certainly in Europe. Indeed, activity seems to be so sparse that the two calls I have heard so far have all opted to carry out the QSO on the channel, which certainly makes life easier

Then there's the mode. ISCAT seems to be the flavour used for 6m MS, because the bursts are longer. A slower mode is preferable. However, for 2m, FSK441 seems to be the mode of choice: it gets the entire message in several times in a short space of time.

So, I'm listening using FSK441 on 144.370. Fortunately, it's all recording what it hears and, much to my surprise, I have managed to capture a couple of CQ calls from foreign stations on my collinear.

The best so far is one from EA3AXV, captured at 16:02 on the 16th. Here's what I saw:

I wonder what power and antenna system he was using. he's about 1300km from me, so the capture is a good one

There is, according to the experts, no point in even trying a QSO without substantially more than 100W and a beam. The beam must be a mixed blessing, and I imagine one doesn't want too much directivity.

http://stardate.org/nightsky/meteors is a useful reference for when showers occur. But there is always activity.

JT65- the appeal

I've been trying to think what appeals to me about JT65. It's an odd mode to use - you're restricted to a formulaic exchange of position, signal reports and that's it. And a full QSO takes 7 (seven) minutes. PSK31 is positively sprinty after an hour of JT65. PSK31 got me back into radio about ten years ago. I blow hot and cold, and the really narrow bandwidth of PSK31, the technical appeal of the whole thing got me going again. I even sat down and learned CW to get onto HF (I was a G7 at the time - VHF only). But the rubber stamp QSOs - inevitable when I suspect most amateurs cannot type, and the inevitable RSQ 599 reports are irritating. So, PSK31 got me onto HF, and I migrated to CW. But JT65 has a number of appeals over CW and PSK. Firstly, the signal reports are genuine. You know you're being a LID (-03) or using your power justifiably (-24), and can adjust accordingly. You realise how fickle propagation is when you get a -03 from Italy, and a -20 from south east France five minutes later. Or how directional your antenna is, or how variable other amateur's rx performance is.....

The other really neat thing is that you can see, using pskreporter and to a certain extent, the RB (Reverse Beacon network), how successful you are being, even if no-one is prepared to talk to a lowly, common as muck M0.

So I keep coming back to it. I can work DX using 10W off a low LW hidden in the trees at the side of my garden. I can't do that in CW or PSK as easily.