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As far as meteor trail propagation goes, I personally have a good bit of experience. Yes, they work great; especially around 50MHz (6 mtrs). This mode of propagation has been utilized by Hams for many many years. The only problem in a survival situation is: when will you know the meteors will be there? Without them there is only background noise. Today, we know because major meteor showers are known well in advance and even announced on WWV; but in the Aftertime it would be an effort in frustration.

However, it does occur to me that during the time period of the 12th's passing, when most other propagation will probably be disrupted, the debris (meteors) that tag along with the 12th planet will probably be bombarding the earth's atmosphere at a never before recorded rate. Meteor scatter propagation would then be fantastic! The thing to remember is that this mode works best from 50Mhz through around 146MHz. With the intensity that I would anticipate, one could probably even use the 10 meter band (~28MHz) and even the CB channels - 11 meter band.

From a broader context, the system made by StarCom has not been explored extensively by HAM radio; although all the components of such a system are in common use every day. A 6 mtr (50MHz) transceiver connected to a packet system and computer could very easily mimic the system marketed by StarCom. The computer could be set up to key the transmitter, say once a second, then listen for an echo. When the echo is heard, the computer would cause a packet to be transmitted and then listen for an acknowledgement from other systems. This would continue until all systems on the network had received the packet correctly. Then the next packet in the queue would be up for the next opportunity. Such a system would be EXTREMELY slow; but for high priority messages could be very reliable and have an extremely large range of coverage, even around the world! I consider this to be a fantastic concept!

I think that this is a good example of you good people continuing to plug away at the problems and suddenly a solution pops forth. Great work! Check out the Amateur Radio Handbook for a most comprehensive discussion of this mode of propagation. Hams have undoubtedly made hundreds of times more radio contacts via this mode of propagation than all other entities combined.

Offered by Ron
WB5KAN