Martyn stated that most meteors are made of dust and Space debris, Small rocks make up asteroids. The majority of known asteroids orbit within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, generally with slightly elongated orbits. The belt is estimated to contain between 1 and 2 million asteroids larger than one kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter, and millions of smaller ones. As the earth travels around the sun it runs into the meteor showers which have been attracted to the earth or the sun. As the shower enters the earth’s atmosphere they burn up producing ionizations that can reflect radio waves. Mostly 4m and 2m are used to ‘bounce off’ these meteor trails.
Early radio amateurs interested in this mode of propagation had to record Morse signals to be transmitted at high speeds to take advantage of the ionization bursts which can last about half a second and at times a bit longer. Of course the transmissions needed to be recorded at the receiving end and played back at a slowed down rate. Modern software now allows all this work to be done in the PC. Software also predicts when these meteor showers can be expected throughout almost every month in the year, as well as providing internet contacts with other operators to set up schedules for contacts.
This part of the hobby does require a person who likes to stay up very late at night for only a few seconds of contacts made by their computer.
