Bouncing signals on meteor trails

Sikhote-Alin meteorite (Muzeeaquarium, Delfzijl)

The perseids meteor shower certainly increases the meteor scatter activity on both 6m and 4m bands. Actually I concentrated on the 4m this time since it is a challenge and a first time this year. The 4m MS frequency is 70.174MHz and most operators use the digimode MSK144. You can either use WSJT-X or MSHV software, others have tested MSHV is more sensitive decoding with MSK144. So MSHV is what I use this year and with great success.






Since I hang out on ON4KST chat these days I learned from others as well. If you ever intend to make use of it....I didn't know of this, so better read this before you make mistakes (Tnx LA7DFA):

https://rudius.net/oz2m/on4kst_cq.htm

I learned that the KST chat is very valuable when you need specific DXCC especially on MS. My last MS contact was made with SM4KYN from Sweden, I learned that in Sweden they can only use 70137.5KHz. So we had to make the MSK144 contact there and succeed. I really didn't knew of this if I didn't had a look on the chat. Besides that we both knew we were on the same frequency and in the right timeslot calling each other.

And yes, I made random contacts but not many. And yes not every QSO did happen in the end. That is the big challenge of meteor scatter and the 4m band. A example of an unfinished contact was with YU7EF (yes, the designer of the antenna I use!) I did get his report but then a thunderstorm was approaching and I had to disconnect the antenna. I hope to meet him on the 4m band another time.

A nice page to view live meteor activity can be found here:

https://www.meteorscan.com/meteor-live.html

Meteorscatter with the use of MSK144 certainly helped me to get some new ones in the log on the 4m band, More about the 4m challenge this year later...