Hello Folks

The receiver located near the Armagh observatory in Northern Ireland is back on the air following a more complete installation after the initial trial. So we now have two of the planned “primary” receivers in the network operational. Along with the first receiver located at the Norman Lockyer observatory this enables us to observe meteor echoes from the GB3MBA beacon from another perspective. We plan to add the third receiver in Scotland north of the central belt when a suitable location has been found. The aim is to be able to study meteor echoes with different reflection geometries. The operational receivers can be viewed at . The NW Hampshire receiver is at the build and test location and is the one to be deployed to Scotland when a suitable host site has been found. Meteor echoes from GB3MBA on 50.408MHz are directional and polarised so it is important that we are able to make observations with varied reflection geometries. I would urge anyone interested in observing meteors using radio to spend a little time looking the the display at the above address. You might be surprised what you will see which will include very different echo shapes and Doppler shifts. Meanwhile the team are working on increasing the display band width, currently limited to +/- 30Hz and its resolution. Timing of the echo of events on the display is affected by the latency through the internet, the first data to be received at the server bing processed first. But the error usually amounts to no more than a second or so. For precise correlation we will be making the raw data from each receiver available. This will have a bandwidth of about +/-10KHz and includes timing data with a precision of < 1mS. Below is an example echo seen by all three receivers as I type this. Brian