[RVRC] a popular meteor shower soon-PERSEIDS

[Marvin Bronstein]

Get Ready for the Perseids!: On the night of August 11 and well into
the next day, Earth will make its annual passage through the bulk of the
debris shed by a comet known as Swift-Tuttle
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/109P/Swift-Tuttle>. Much of the debris is
composed of dust-sized grains, but when these fragments come plunging
into our atmosphere they can create a dazzling meteor display. Not only
are the meteors fascinating to watch, they also leave short-lived
streams of ionized gas in their wake. As hams have known for years,
these meteor trails are excellent reflectors of radio waves. The
Swift-Tuttle meteor showers are known as the Perseids
<http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/31jul_perseids2009.htm> because
they appear to come from a point in the sky that lies within the
constellation Perseus. This year's shower is forecast to be especially
active because we're about to pass through a somewhat thicker filament
of dust that boiled off Swift-Tuttle in 1862. If you own a 6 or 2 meter
SSB/CW transceiver, you can get in on the action, bouncing your signals
off Perseid meteor trails and making quick meteor scatter contacts over
hundreds of miles, and possibly even as much as 1200 miles
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_scatter>. Meteor scatter operation
is particularly easy on 6 meters where 100 W and an omnidirectional
antenna will do the job. On 2 meters a directional antenna (such as a
multielement Yagi) usually yields better results. Some meteor scatter
operators prefer to use SSB, making rapid exchanges of signal reports
and grid squares. In recent years digital meteor scatter has been
increasing in popularity. With the free sound-card-based WSJT software
suite by Joe Taylor, K1JT, it is possible to make digital meteor scatter
contacts almost any time of the day or night, not just during annual
showers <http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/>. Most WSJT scatter
operators use a mode known as FSK441 and center their activities on
calling frequencies at 50.260 and 144.140 MHz. They also announce their
availability by using Web sites just as N0UK's Ping Jockey Central
<http://www.pingjockey.net/cgi-bin/pingtalk>. So turn on your radio late
Tuesday night and start listening. As the shower intensifies, you'll
begin hearing bursts of signals. That's the time to grab the microphone
(or keyboard) and get on the air!