In March 1988 I visited George Vernardakis SV1AB (formerly F9QN of
Marseilles, France) who spoke to me about his contribution to the
transequatorial tests and his other experiments in connection with
Moonbounce, Meteor Scatter and Sporadic E propagation.
"In 1965" George told me, "I was the only SV station equipped for
contacts via meteor scatter so it was easy for me to make contacts
with many European stations. The longest distance I achieved was with
UA1DZ a Physics Professor at the University of Leningrad in the Soviet
Union."
Norman: "Forgive me for interrupting you, but please explain in
simple terms what you mean by meteor scatter."
George: "Meteor scatter is a way of making contacts on 2 metres by
reflection from meteorites--'shooting stars' as they are called
colloquially--which we see on clear nights during the summer. Of
course they are not falling stars at all--they are meteorites which
burn up when they hit the earth's atmosphere, leaving the trail that
we see. We take advantage of this phenomenon for bouncing our signals
off the trail but unfortunately it is a very short-lived event. Once
when there were a lot of meteorites I was able to maintain contact
with LX1SI of Luxembourg for a whole three minutes on SSB. It was
during the period of the Persides which usually occur for a week in
August when the earth's orbit takes it through this cloud of space
debris. Millions of meteorites can be as small as a grain of sand and
of course leave no visible trail when they strike the earth's
atmosphere. The earth goes through other major clusters in April and
in December. The phenomenon can also affect signals on lower
frequencies. One can be in QSO on 20 metres via ground wave with a
station a couple of hundred miles away with signals around s2 to s3.
Suddenly one or two words are heard at s9 which indicates a momentary
reflection off a meteorite trail."
George also explained that in order to defeat the brevity of the
time when communication was possible it was customary to record a
message on a tape recorder and transmit it at high speed. The other
station would also record at high speed and then play back at normal
speed to hear the message normally.