After about a month and a half from the beginning of the meteor scatter project with a satisfactory success, we wanted to make a small improvement to the reception system by doubling the antenna.
From the beginning the antenna was a four element 1.5 lambda boom length with a gain of about 8.5 dbd. We found it very performing so I quickly build a second one twin antenna.
The total gain at the moment is increased to about 11 dbd, stacking between booms is only about 1 meter so to get a fatter main lobe, it’s not an ham radio DX antenna, for the project was better to get a wider capture area.
The result was since the first start really impressive! The average per hour of the captured events was more than doubled immediately.
Take a look at the chart:
The orange line represents the day with maximum recorded events in semptember with only one antenna, the blue line shows the first complete 24 working hours of the system with 2 antennas.
Probably the higher gain and the wider capture area give to the system many more and stronger echoes, what was under the noise level before is now a good signal to sample.
What follows is an example of what the receiver catch during a non-peak period:
