The Shamrock Banks Meteor Fence

This is the Meteor Fence with the old SDR. Peak times are 12 midnight to 12 noon Eastern Time, but detections can occur 24 hours a day. We are monitoring the carrier signal of Channel 2 TV in N. Platte, Nebraska, some 1345 km to the West. This is beyond the range of my Yagi antenna. There are further stations in that direction in Colorado. There is also a Channel 2 in Indiana, but the Yagi is directional and pointed West, and indiana is to the South, outside the beam. We may have some interference from that Indiana station (which may give a very light signal) but the strong reflections are meteors. Depending on the angle of the meteor trail, I might get some reflection of the Indiana signal. As the station in Nebraska can only 'see' a meteor within 1000 km for a direct reflection to me, those weak signals could possibly represent a meteor within 300 km of my location (weaker signal due to 'side' reflection). Another issue we have is the scatter effect of the atmosphere. We can get very weak signals from great distance due to day/night variations in the ionosphere. The meteor scatter/detection can be identified by the very strong (bright) signal compared to the dim and nearly constant baseline scatter of the atmosphere. When Meteors enter the atmosphere 80 km above the surface of the earth, they leave a brief ionized trail- This trail reflects the carrier signal of Digital Channel 2 (54.310MHz) and allows me to pick it up. The range of detection from my location is about 1000 km. Meteors that pass between me and the station in Nebraska (out to about 1000 km) will result in a spike in the waterfall. The longer the spike, the longer the trail persists (and is indirectly related to the size of the meteor). Long traces are 'fireballs'. Short ones are on the order of shooting stars. The Blue Waterfall is centered on 54.310 MHz, and you see the returns from the meteor trails in both the graph of the signal and the waterfall. Peak Meteor times are 12am to 12 Noon with a peak around dawn. This is due to the orbit of the earth- during those times my location is on the 'leading edge' of the earth in its orbit. The advantage of using the carrier frequency for Channel 2 Digital TV is that there are not many stations so their locations are easy to isolate. I'm using an old 10' TV antenna on a 10 m tower which is tuned to 50 MHz so it is the perfect set up. Note that sometimes the wind makes the antenna move a little South and we pick up some ghosting from the Indiana station. If I keep it 90 degrees to that line I still get Nebraska and true detections. You can tell the true detections from the ghosting by the brightness of the return, dim is Indiana, bright white is a meteor for the Nebraska signal. Help the Channel by joining our channel as a member Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/bobthescienceguy or sending a Paypal for equipment (I do take requests for content) https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=ED65DTMU9AB8C Music Credit: https://www.youtube.com/@RelaxationMeditationMusic Bob Be sure to check out the new channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOHdBpPS0wOwPWPQEMWmvwA


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