Meteor Scatter

Every day, countless tiny bits of space dust burn up roughly 50 to 75 miles above the ground. Each one leaves a short-lived trail of ionized gas that can reflect VHF signals. Meteor scatter uses those trails to make contacts well beyond line of sight, out to about 1,300 miles (2,100 km).

It is most popular on 6 m and 2 m. A trail lasts anywhere from a fraction of a second to several seconds, so signals arrive as short pings and occasional longer bursts, with silence in between. Bursts on 6 m tend to be longer and more frequent than on 2 m, which makes 6 m the easier place to start.

For meteor scatter, WSJT-X offers MSK144, a mode designed for the job. It sends your message over and over at high speed, so even a brief ping can carry a complete message. The two stations take turns in fixed periods, usually 15 seconds, though 5, 10 and 30 seconds are also available. Agree on who transmits in the first period, and keep your computer clock set accurately, or the timing falls apart.

There are two kinds of meteors to work with. Random, or sporadic, meteors arrive every day, and there are more of them before dawn because the morning side of Earth faces the direction the planet is traveling.

Meteor showers add many more, especially in the days around their peaks. Three of the strongest peak around January 3 to 4 (the Quadrantids), August 12 to 13 (the Perseids) and December 13 to 14 (the Geminids). Check the International Meteor Organization calendar for each year’s predictions.

On a speaker, a meteor ping is a sudden whistle or warble that pops out of the noise and vanishes. A full contact can take many minutes of patient back-and-forth while you wait for enough pings to finish the exchange, so settle in and let the software do the decoding.

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