wxsatuser

I had lots of pings and at times several pings on a continuous signal.

Still got to see what happened last night.
Work to day so will check the screen shots tonight.

Some Geminids from last night.
Lots of short lived stuff and the best of the bunch below.

There was a recent daylight one over New York state, seen from Toronto to Virginia a loud sonic boom was heard.

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/mysterious-explosion-heard-over-central-ny-caused-by-meteor

6 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Hopefully you can seen an image on that post now.

Yes, now visible.

Looks like the same event, nice.

If you are using the Autosave tif in DSS it will be very dark and will need stretching.

cannot see images.

Another long one from the Leonids, this one at least 100secs, spread over three screen shots.

Try these as well

http://www.ars-electromagnetica.de/robs/

https://ea4eoz.blogspot.com/2015/05/determining-radiant-of-meteor-using.html

4 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Here’s a general question regarding the aerial: does the elevation angle of the aerial really matter? The theoretical elevation from my location is 17°, but if it is basically horizontal, will it make a significant difference? I am struggling to devise a good method of getting the 17° angle on the antenna when I am mounting the system outside on a big tripod and 3m mast. I bought an adjustable elevation bracket, but it is a bit flimsy and I don’t have the correct hardware to attach the aerial to it anyway! I’m wondering if I can not worry about this 17° angle for now and still get good data?

My logperiodic has no elevation and does ok.

In my 144MHz meteorscatter days my setup had about 5degrees of elevation.
I worked all over Europe and as far south as Tunisia..

Here is a nice Leonid from this year.
Screen capture only so two shots cover this one, the tick marks are 10secs.

The last image of the group has a satellite reflection.

Well done, glad you could hear it.

6 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

That’s very helpful, thank you Mike. So if I point the aerial towards Wrotham (basically east from where I am), I should be able to pick up that signal, hopefully?

If you have a good VHF site, highish and in the clear I don't see why not, worth a try.

I can hear it, albeit I'm closer but it does'nt beam my way and my location is low down.

1 hour ago, PhotoGav said:

Everything is still being registered at 2300 Hz above 143048000, which is 300 Hz higher than the GRAVES signal. I think that the Funcube dongle must be slightly out with its tuning numbers. I see that there is a setting to make a global alteration to account for this, but I need a single test frequency to lock on to and make the adjustment. Do you know of a suitable frequency that I could use?

 

All in all, I think that the system is working quite well now and I look forward to seeing what it captures over the next few days and nights.

 

Thanks,

Gav.

You could try GB3VHF on 144.430MHz, it's in Kent near Wrotham and one beam is aimed 288degs.
I would think it should be audible near you if you have reasonable site.

It is GPS locked so should be very stable and bang on frequency.
Tune USB to 144.429MHz and you can adjust the carrier to that frequency.
As well as a carrier/morse you may hear some JT65B signals.
Morse starts every odd minute past the hour for 13seconds and JT65B every even minute past the hour for 48secs.

On 20/11/2020 at 14:36, MylesGibson said:

On the stars you mean? Could possibly be my camera at fault there. Think I'm going to need a new one soon. It's old, getting close to 30k shutter count now. And unmodified. Plus LP from my back garden. Could all be contributing perhaps?

Over exposed, your over 50% on the Canon histogram.
Plus the stars on the right hand side are egg shaped, left looks ok.

10 hours ago, Kyle Allen said:

Lovely image but the stars look big on the left side (like they are ever so slightly out of focus) compared to the right.

It's not quite right to the left, looks like slight coma top left even in the unprocessed stack.

These Samyangs can vary a bit, mine has a very slight odd corner but not as bad as that.
It's a modded camera so may be something not so perfect about that.

On 21/11/2020 at 19:35, Darrellc said:

The first image has a FWHM score of 7.03 and the second one is 8.30.  The total score for the first one was 890.  This image was taken a few nights earlier with a Nikon 85mm at f1.8 and 1’ 15” exposures.  The score on this one was 9160 and the FWHM score was 5.26.  Again my untrained eye thought the second image from above was way better than this one and yet it scored so much higher.  I forgot to mention that I used 50 darks and 20 bias files but no flats.  I assumed the stars in the corners were elongated due to vignetting.

Forget about using this lens at f1.8, to many abberations.
Stop it down and they might improve.

Most likely because the stars are not round, your stars are slightly elongated, corner ones have coma.

DSS needs to find at least 8 good stars common to each of the frames.

A Leonid via GRAVES radar on 143.050MHz, yesterday at approx 11:23UTC.

Going by the 10sec ticks this lasted around 50secs.
Snap shots are taken every 30secs so did not quite get it in one shot but two.

RX was an ICOM 7100 feeding into Spectran software, antenna 21 element log periodic.

3 hours ago, johnb said:

interesting - do you run a 24x7 setup ?

 

John

Not at the moment, just weekends.

Most of my time and the computers time is spent running hamradio digital modes on HF and VHF.
When nothing is doing on VHF I put the receiver on GRAVES.

I do have two spare SDRplay RSP1As and I will try and get one doing 24/7 GRAVES shortly.

27 minutes ago, johnb said:

Hi im sure its just settings etc, there is no reason why you should not get get GRAVES all the time its transmitting, I collaborate with others and some are on the south coast like yourself and they have no issues

John B

 

I do receive it direct most of the time, which is surprising with 400feet of chalk in the way.
Yesterday afternoon it was completely missing apart from a few seconds here and there.
Most of the time as well as direct signal I get many pings and a few short bursts, occasionally some nice long bursts.
Have had many satellites like ISS, and Moon reflections a few times.

On 07/11/2020 at 08:41, morinmau said:

Hello wxsatuser,

Ok but why i don't get the 'usual' streaks at low speed/doppler shift that means a reflection from a plane (as I see in waterfalls from other radio stations) ?

Hi Maurizio, I suppose it's where you are in relation to the aircraft.

I can receive GRAVES direct but not all the time and I get the diverging/parallel lines.
BTW I am located in IO90uv UK south coast my call is G1HWY.

It does'nt sound like a typical ping but there is still a chance it is.

Sounds a bit odd to me and it's 400Hz off frequency

The double traces and diverging ones are more than likely aircraft returns.

2 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Oh My God... we have a hit (I think!)...

This looks far more as I was expecting - is this a meteor?

 

 

If your using SSB set the dongle to 143.049MHz and then the signal should appear at 1khz and at least you know where it is and it's GRAVES.
You should be able to calibrate the dongle when you get a few hits and get the signal on 1khz as near as possible.