BRAMS: Belgian RAdio Meteor Stations

BRAMS Newsfeed

Description of material supplied by BIRA for future stations of the BRAMS network

The material BIRA-IASB will supply for each station is the following:

  • one commercial receiver ICOM IC-R75
  • one 3-element Yagi antenna (with a mechanical part allowing to easily adjust the tilt-angle)
  • one GPS clock (although we are still working on the code to efficiently use them)
  • some 50 Ohms coaxial cables with the adequate length.

For those interested to host such a station, we kindly ask you to provide us an estimate of the length of the coaxial cables you would need.

Status of the BRAMS network

1. Beacon in Dourbes :

  • Nearly all the material has arrived : signal generator, power amplifier, antenna (built in the workshop). Only coaxial cables are missing.
  • We have visited the Dourbes site and have an agreement to use a specific place where we will install the beacon. Here are a few pictures of this place :
  • For the initial tests in Dourbes, we will use a two-element Yagi antenna like the one in Ieper. These tests will also allow us to check we do not perturb the other instruments located on the Dourbes site. Later on, We will use a metallic grid of 8 m x 8 m as the reflecting part instead of the simple reflecting tube of the Yagi antenna. With this configuration, the gain will be significantly larger. We will work on this grid during the summer.

2. The station in BISA : It is located next to our institute, in the KMI/IRM park. We have 2 antennas : one three element Yagi listening to 49.99 MHz and one crossed three element Yagi listening to 49.97 MHz. Here are some pictures: 3. The network :

  • We have 20 ICOM IC-R75 that eventually will be given to every station of the network to listen to the new frequency 49.97 MHz
  • We have GPS clocks available for every station (more details about them in another e-mail soon)
  • Twenty 3-element Yagi antennas are under construction at the BIRA workshop and will be distributed as well
  • We will ask everyone if they agree to host a station and who has enough space for it. We will organize a meeting in September/October in order to discuss this topic and maybe to start distributing the material.

4. The interferometer in Humain :

  • Works have started on August 4. Tranches have been digged and concrete blocks have been made.
  • We will also install a mast of 12 meters high supported by guy-wires which will act as a VLF antenna. Cables will be installed in a way to make a rhomb with a surface of approximately 50 square meters. This will act as a magnetic antenna. Although it will mainly be used to detect whistlers, we also plan to look for coincident VHF meteor echoes and VLF emissions.

5. Various :

  • Two students from Pierre Ernotte at EPHEC have worked on an automatic detection method of meteors in spectrograms in the framework of their master degree. They presented their results at BISA in June. We intend to continue the collaboration with these students during the summer (as summer jobs) and with other students from EPHEC next year.
  • An Action 1 proposal has been sent to Belspo (Belgian scientific policy) to get fundings for one scientist for a period of 4 years to work on and analyse the future BRAMS data.

Presentation at Meteorendag

Today we give a presentation about the BRAMS project at the Meteorendag in public observatory Halley in The Netherlands. During the presentation we will give a general overview of the project.

FTP Server

Today we have set-up a FTP server for people that have joined our project. Initially, you can use this server to upload your WAV files when there is an interesting event (such as a nice head echo). It will then be easy for anyone who wants to do some analysis with these data to download them. Later we'll find some other applications for this FTP server.

Future Beacon

We have ordered an OX32 crystal at HM International according to suggestions from Gaspard Dewilde and Michel Anciaux (one of our new collaborator at BISA). We will very soon order a power amplifier and additional components needed to have a beacon emitting a power of 150W at a frequency of 49.970 MHz. Once we have all the details concerning the commercial instruments we will use, we will send them to the IBPT and we will offically buy the frequency slots. We still have to carefully think where to locate this beacon. Discussions will be started soon with René Warnant who is responsible of the Dourbes site.

Demo during the Open Doors

During this week-end (October 3 and 4), the Open Doors of the Institute are organized (together also with the Royal Observatory and the Institute of Meteorology). As an activity, we will show our new receiving station. Since we have some problems to listen to the frequency of the Yper beacon, we will listen to some Eastern European TV emitters at 49.7385 MHz where we see a lot of meteors. We will also make some advertisement of our common project.

First Tests

The first tests to listen to the beacon frequency in Yper haven't been successful because of the presence of a local annoying repetitive and strong signal that prevented us to see any meteor reflexion. We will first check if this signal is very local or not. If it is not coming from the Uccle Plateau, then we will ask the IBPT to find out who is emitting at this frequency.

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