UFO Geek
Monitor Meteors and More
Using available high power analog RF
Meteor Pings I recorded during Lunar Eclipse 10 Dec 2011
Captured on 29 Nov 2011 using the 55.250 MHz reflection method
Monitoring meteors and other space objects got a lot easier once the United States turned off the majority of their analog signal television transmitters. That left a bunch of stations in Mexico to blanket the southern United States with a curtain of high power radio frequency (RF), with much of those signals shooting up into the sky into the ionosphere. Using this blanket of RF, it's easy to receive the frequency reflection caused by incoming meteors (forward-scatter radio-meteor events), which ionize the ionosphere causing an echo of the transmitted frequency. The high power TV frequency signals hit that ionized portion, and return downward to earth (echo). Using a receiver and antenna system tuned to a specific frequency and mode, one can track incoming meteors, satellites, and maybe even UFOs.
Locations of Mexican television stations that transmit at 55.250 MHz (video carrier signal).
Simulated RF patterns of the 100 KW stations as they send their signals skyward.
What happens when a meteor enters the atmosphere, ionizing the ionosphere?
The 55.250 MHz signal is reflected back toward earth (echo), as it bounces off the ionized
portion of the ionosphere created by the incoming meteor. Some of the RF signals that were traveling upward,
now come back down to be spread along the earth at different angles of propagation.
Here is what you see (audio fed into a spectrogram program) when the RF is received at the receiver/antenna system. Receiver tuned to 55.251 MHz, set in the Lower Sideband mode (LSB), you hear a 'ping' or tone (echo).
Another example of the meteor echo, with RF audio tone fed into a spectrogram program.
Antenna used to receive meteor echo signals. 12 element yagi with pre-amp attached.
Receiver used, AOR 8200 tuned to 55.251 MHz, LSB.
Antenna pre-amp power supply. Amplifies 54 MHz to 800 Mhz (10db - 30db).
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