[microsound] Poetics of Forward Scatter

[Thomas Ashcraft <ashcraft@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

( Microsound list relevance :  Pertains to home-built poetic reception 
and sound recording instruments )


January 11, 2005


There is a method of radio reception that employs incoming meteors from 
outer space called "forward scatter" to bounce in far-off radio 
transmitters. Essentially, a meteor or "shooting star" creates a 
momentary ionized plasma trail in the upper ionosphere and this plasma 
trail has the ability to reflect in far-off radio transmitters hundreds 
and even  a thousand miles distant.  It is a slightly complicated radio 
method to explain and I will refer you to links for detailed information 
as to how it is done.

My radio astronomy interests over the years have been primarily data and 
energy oriented and I personally have been suppressive of esthetic 
content.  But I have always recognized that my forward scatter 
observations did indeed have an esthetic and poetic component because as 
a meteor refected in distant radio stations a sort of "automatic" 
poetics would often be revealed.

Hear a couple of specimens of forward scatter reception that I captured 
using re-entering space shuttles as the meteric reflecting phenomena.at 
the page below.

http://www.heliotown.com/Radio_Fireball_Observatory_SpaceShuttle_reentries.html 


Thomas Ashcraft
Radio Fireball Observatory
www.heliotown.com

For info on forward scatter see :

http://www.imo.net/radio/
http://www.amsmeteors.org/radmet.html
: