This is one of a series of “Notes” I published on Facebook. Since Facebook has discontinued the Notes feature, I am publishing that series here on my blog.

Woo-hoo! What a fun event! This was the first time in some years I had a good station for two meter DXing such as meteor scatter. I wanted to have some fun and see what I could work with it. This is undoubtedly the best setup I ever used for meteor scatter, due mostly to the antenna height. I am running 1500 watts to a 13 element YU7EF yagi at 110 feet (33 meters). However several factors re not ideal. The feedline is good cable but long with about 2.5 dB loss. I don’t have a mast mounted preamplifier so my receive may not be optimum. My location is not the best. I am in a small valley next to a river. Given antenna height, my horizon in the most important direction, southwest, ranges from about +0.0 to +0.5 degree.

I was able to complete some QSOs more than 1200 miles (1930km) on random in response to my CQ. My best distance this shower was also my all time best personal meteor scatter DX record with KC4PX at 1334 miles (2146km). Ivars heard a lot more from me than I did from him but there was a 6dB power difference. He was running 350 watts to a single yagi antenna. His best signal here was +6, which is some 10 dB above the minimum that I can decode. This not only gives me a new personal MS DX record, but also hope for longer distances in the future. It took 47 minutes to complete the QSO but it was time well spent! Ivars also heard me at several other times during this meteor shower. My horizon is +0.3 degree at the exact heading to KC4PX.

N1BUG 144 MHz MS QSOs for Perseids 2017

The meteors were best between approximately 0300 UTC August 12 to 1700 UTC August 12. During peak times some random QSOs could be completed in the minimum number of 15 second sequences, including W0VB at a distance of 1162 miles (1870km). This was not one long burn, but a collection of smaller meteors that allowed us to transfer needed QSO information in every 15 second slot.

I cannot say for sure that it was one long burn but I had three consecutive full 15 second periods of N4QWZ with two of my transmit periods in between. If this was one long burn as it appeared to be from signal quality and characteristics, it was more than 75 seconds!

I made 22 meter scatter QSOs in 13 states. It seemed odd that I didn’t work any Canadian stations. I did not count grid squares.

I can hardly wait for the next major meteor shower! You can be certain I will be pushing for longer distances in the future. I should be able to extend the distance with a full legal power station at the other end.