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Graves Radar - Radio Based Meteor Detector


Al.Grant

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My Radio Meteor Detector has been off-line for a few months due to hardware issues but is back now and although not running 24/7 it is auto uploading to the web.

http://ukstargazer.net/radio-meteor-detector/  Shows current biggest/brightest detections

http://ukstargazer.net/radio-meteor-detector/meteor-waterfall/  Waterfall screen auto updates every 60secs.

 

With the weather as it is at the moment and the Quadrantid due to reach its peak at about 8am on 4 Jan I thought this may be of interest if you want to try listen to a few pings without sunrise or clouds getting in the way.

 

There are a number of WebSDR servers available online, these are essentially remote receivers that you can control to a wide variety of freqs.

This UK one  http://websdr.suws.org.uk/  can be set to monitor the Graves Radar freq (143050Khz) and you can listen to meteor pings as they come in.

 

Frequency:  143048Khz
Band: 144
Mode: CW

 

In main display the yellow cursor is what you are listening to. You can drag the curor out to give a wider bandwidth or drag up/down the scale to change freq.

At 143050 you should see a label for Graves Radar, if you set the freq to 143048 that will give a 2khz tone when a meteor is detected.

You can change the speed, size and view of the main screen.  

I have found speed = Medium, Size = Large worked well.  Setting view to weak sigs seems to increase the sensitivity.

 

I watched this display for a while this afternoon and heard a couple of good pings.  Remote logging in to my meteor detector at home confirmed the hit.

I also saw a very strong/clear Ham voice signal on 143051.75Khz but if you narrow the bandwidth down you can easily filter that out.

This voice signal is something I never see on my home detector.

 

I believe you can record the audio for later playback and also feed it into some SDR software like Spectrum Lab or HDSDR but I've not tried this.

I also tried tuning in to listen to one of the ISS passes (they often transmit on Ham radio) but heard nothing.

 

The highest ping rates seem to be in the early hours of the morning, if you're up and around then you may want a listen.

 

I think in the UK the peak is due to be 4 Jan at about 8am:  

 

 

Al

 

P.S.  My detector might be off the air for a couple of days from Monday afternoon as I'm away and I'll probably be taking the laptop with me, but should be up and running during the peak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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