Posted by
michael
on from the snap-crackle-pop dept.
Earendi1 writes "Space.com has an article indicating that it's possible to "listen" to the Leonid meteor shower on radio and television.
Basically, it explains that meteors can cause reception of weak, distant radio stations in the FM band and TV stations between channels 2 & 6."
Quite true. Radio amateurs experiment with sending messages by this method; it's called "meteor scatter". See:
http://www.qsl.net/dk3xt/hsms.htm
and
http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ws1_15.html
73 de Maggie K3XS
-- -=Maggie Leber=-
How to automate the process easily
by
Simon+Field
·
· Score: 2, Informative
With a cheap male-male earphone cord from Radio Shack, you can connect the earphone jack of a
cheap transistor radio to the input jack of your
sound card.
Now you can tune the radio to a weak station a
few hundred miles away (getting just static),
and let the computer do the listening all night
long.
In the morning, you can drop the data into Excel
and graph it.
The sound card will record quiet, interrupted by
loud signals that show up as peaks in the graph.
In my area (Silicon Valley) there are lots of
stations to the south-southwest (Los Angeles)
in the low part of the FM band.
You can use this site to find them:
Kodis
It lists the power as well as the frequency for
each station.
A radio with a digital tuner makes it easy to set
the frequency even when the station cannot be heard. A rotatable TV antenna is not required,
but it would help by listening only in one
direction, and by picking up weaker signals.
If your TV has an earphone output (or you have
a adapter plug for your VCR's output jack) you
can use the TV in the same way.
Re:How to automate the process easily
by
mlyle
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The problem with this is limiter noise-- FM radios tend to output higher signal levels when they -aren't- tuned to a station than when they are.
Unfortunately meteor scatter doesn't work for MF where AM stations are, but AM radios would be a much better bet (though auto gain control would hide the effect some here, even).
Slashdot Mirror
Quite true. Radio amateurs experiment with sending messages by this method; it's called "meteor scatter". See:
http://www.qsl.net/dk3xt/hsms.htm
and
http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ws1_15.html
73 de Maggie K3XS
-=Maggie Leber=-
With a cheap male-male earphone cord from Radio Shack, you can connect the earphone jack of a cheap transistor radio to the input jack of your sound card.
Now you can tune the radio to a weak station a few hundred miles away (getting just static), and let the computer do the listening all night long.
In the morning, you can drop the data into Excel and graph it.
The sound card will record quiet, interrupted by loud signals that show up as peaks in the graph.
In my area (Silicon Valley) there are lots of stations to the south-southwest (Los Angeles) in the low part of the FM band.
You can use this site to find them: Kodis
It lists the power as well as the frequency for each station.
A radio with a digital tuner makes it easy to set the frequency even when the station cannot be heard. A rotatable TV antenna is not required, but it would help by listening only in one direction, and by picking up weaker signals.
If your TV has an earphone output (or you have a adapter plug for your VCR's output jack) you can use the TV in the same way.
Free book: Science Toys You Can Make