The Perseids meteor shower peaks annually around the 12-13th. While it’s a beautiful thing to see in a dark sky, meteor showers open up exciting new propagation modes!

Normally, very high frequency radio waves higher than 50MHz don’t refract back to Earth, making them line of sight, with higher frequency HF bands above 14MHz deionizing during nighttime when the sun slips away.

However, when small space rocks burn up in the atmosphere, they create a trail of ionization for a few seconds that allows for radio waves beyond the 2m ham band (144MHz) even into the 70cm (430MHz) and above!

While I've had past success with a homebrew Moxon (~6dBi), I tried to see just how weak of a setup I could make a contact with. With just 20W, a homebrew dipole, and plenty of patience, I was making contacts all across the western half of the US! You could see by the signal strength when a big one burned up. I set up outside and was able to see the cosmic light show and work it too!