Wednesday the 21st of October saw the Peak of the Orionids Meteor Shower coinciding with a 6m activity day on WSPR.
I could have been on JT6M looking for M/S activity or joining in the E/S opening to Spain, however I decided to beam East with WSPR. G3XBM near Cambridge was on, after some overhead A/S was observed I captured an interesting one.
Now all we need to do is explain the signal which defies all the rules for Aircraft Scatter. What I think we are seeing is a meteor shower relatively overhead of G3XBM this has caused E layer reflections for some 15 seconds followed by some fast moving trails for another 15 secs. at the end of the period some fast moving patches of ionisation (from break up of a Meteor?) cause reflections that I think resemble smoke rings.
If you have lots of knowledge of extended period reflections from meteors it would be great to hear your interpretation.
The Sporadic E from the meteor shower lasted for some time, this later Grab is easier to explain.
I turned my beam to the North East, knowing that SM6NZV and OZ1PIF were operational.
2009-10-21 07:58 SM6NZV 50.294406 -26 0 JO57xk 5 OZ1PIF JO65an 209 179
The trace is at the correct frequency for SM6NZV and the WSPR signal is visible for the complete 2 Minute period via Sporadic E from the Meteors, at least 5 meteor pings are clearly visible and were audible. Unfortunately the signal did not de-code.
