[aprssig] APRS Meteor Scatter monitoring

[Robert Bruninga]

Monitoring for Meteors on APRS:

If you live in a remote area with only one APRS digipeater that
you can hear, then you have a good chance of hearing some APRS
packets via Meteor scatter.

Just point a good beam towards a high-density APRS area some 500
to 1000 miles away tuned to 144.39.  (A preamp also helps)...
Go to sleep and see what you have captured by the next morning.
Just look on your map for any stations in that distance range.
If you got any, then look at the path and be sure they were not
heard via any digipeaters.  If you heard them direct, or their
local digipeater direct, then chances are you heard it via MS.
Or TROPO.

See: http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/meteors.html

Under the recent optimization of the APRS network under the
New-N paradigm, the amount of QRM due to dupes on the national
APRS channel has been significantly reduced.  This means those
people in remote areas that normally only hear one digipeater,
will hear lots of silence between the packets.  These silent
periods are all great opportunities to hear distant packets via
meteor bounce (from the other 10,000 signal sources in the USA
for example).

A beam that is low (to minimize hearing local QRM, but that can
see down to 10 degrees or lower on the selected horizon, will be
best.

During meteor showers, we can actually configure the local
digipeaters for one night to be even further reduced from
out-of-area QRM making it easier to hear more silence while
still supporting local APRS only.

You can do this any night, or you can wait for the next Meteor
Showers in Oct, Nov, Dec and Jan.

WB4APR, Bob