2m meteor scatter - first trial in 2010/12
Get back to the equipment overview...
After changing my antenna construction for all bands i wanted to know ho meteor scatter works.
Today's first information source on most things is the internet. The first webpage i found
was like striking home. The page of Eckart Moltrecht / DJ4UF
gave me all the things greenhorns need to know for starting in this kind of mode. For sure - it's not a complete knowledge base, but this
is another topic i will come back later on.
Within only one week i was able to work the following stations / countries:
I was usig WSJT by Joe Tailor / K1JT. With his special mode for meteor scatter also very short pings can be enough for making
a QSO complete. For my first tries i used my Icom IC-706 with only 50W und a 17 element long yagi (15,3dBi/13,15dBd)from Tonna. My
antenna is fed with an aircom plus cable (measured attenuation @ 1,3dB). This is only about 58,8dBm or a little less than 760W
radiated power. Other stations not seldom do more than 10kW.
Within only one week i was able to work the following stations / countries:
sometimes i did some variation test with my 9el-Yagi that is also equipped with an elevation rotator. Besides i did also tests
with my club's (DOK C09) transceiver IC-7400. It's got 3dB more output power, but i could not see realy better results.
This is how it looks like on the screen:
This is how it looks like on the screen:
In a QSO with Gennadi / ES3RF , who is located directly in Tallin, i let the audio recording run and coud use this file to reproduce
the main elements for the screenshot. You can see the coarse steps of a MS QSO. Gennadi's last
trasnmission can be seen as the vertical red dotted line right above the green audio peak. You get an impression, how strong his signal
was, because the black area after the redish line was the ALC tuning up the sensitivity slowly after this event. The green / blue dotted
area is just standard noise when receiving nearly nothing (except noise).
Gennadi sent a row of 73s. They occur in the last line of the QSO in the middle of the screenshot. In the same line are also some more interestic data fields as "dB", which means, that Gennadi's signal was 8dB above noise level during this transmission. This is typical for MS connections. Most time i let the radio run with closed Squelch on 144,370MHz. If a meteor scatter signal can be heard, i can directly switch to "operating mode"...
While the BCC-MS-Contest was taking place (every year @ the high season of the Geminides), i could learn a lot of things. I ha my personal training on interpreting the WSJT parameters and also in answering CQ and more. This sounds as some trivial things, but in fact it is not. I did not have much QSOs at all...
I was wondering, why nobody answered me in the Chat of ON4KST. After observing the ado i saw, that someone wrote about the contest rules: "only random QSOs allowed - no QSOs via Chat". Next i was fooling myself by turning the antenna in the direction of the calling station - no answer at all, but also no more to hear... If you study this very mode, it will get clear, what the failure was.
Problem 1: The antenna was turned away from a reflection point that was surely working
Problem 2: Generally CQ calls will be done on a certain frequency - mainly on 144,300MHz-, but the caller will listen and do the QSO on a different frequency. This can be seen on CQ texts like „CQ 68.." or „CQ 368", who directly show the listening QRG. Another way of giving this information is to send CQ "AA" = TX-QRG + 27KHz, CQ "BB" = TX-QRG + 28KHz, CQ "CC" = TX-QRG + 29KHz, etc...
Gennadi sent a row of 73s. They occur in the last line of the QSO in the middle of the screenshot. In the same line are also some more interestic data fields as "dB", which means, that Gennadi's signal was 8dB above noise level during this transmission. This is typical for MS connections. Most time i let the radio run with closed Squelch on 144,370MHz. If a meteor scatter signal can be heard, i can directly switch to "operating mode"...
While the BCC-MS-Contest was taking place (every year @ the high season of the Geminides), i could learn a lot of things. I ha my personal training on interpreting the WSJT parameters and also in answering CQ and more. This sounds as some trivial things, but in fact it is not. I did not have much QSOs at all...
I was wondering, why nobody answered me in the Chat of ON4KST. After observing the ado i saw, that someone wrote about the contest rules: "only random QSOs allowed - no QSOs via Chat". Next i was fooling myself by turning the antenna in the direction of the calling station - no answer at all, but also no more to hear... If you study this very mode, it will get clear, what the failure was.
Problem 1: The antenna was turned away from a reflection point that was surely working
Problem 2: Generally CQ calls will be done on a certain frequency - mainly on 144,300MHz-, but the caller will listen and do the QSO on a different frequency. This can be seen on CQ texts like „CQ 68.." or „CQ 368", who directly show the listening QRG. Another way of giving this information is to send CQ "AA" = TX-QRG + 27KHz, CQ "BB" = TX-QRG + 28KHz, CQ "CC" = TX-QRG + 29KHz, etc...