[HCDX]: Leonids disappoint Asian watchers

["Sonny M. Ashimori" <sonny@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Friends,

We set out late last night with a few amateur astrologist friends to watch
what was believed to be the "biggest show in 33 years of the Leonid meteor
shower." We drove 30 km to escape city lights (34N/135E), and my friends
set their cameras at about 2 a.m. (1700 UTC) when the sky cleared up and
the condition looked ideal. I had brought my FRG-7700 with a simple 10m
antenna, and a portable FM radio. It was very windy and cold, but we stayed
there about two hours, lying on the ground, vaguely looking into the
northeastern sky.

I saw 6 of them myself in what seemed like 20 minutes, and my friends saw
many more, but apparently all the experts thought wrong when they predicted
the peak to be 1900 UTC Nov. 17. Now they say it came 8-12 hours earlier,
when it was midday in Japan, and reportedly "thousands" were seen in parts
of Europe. We saw an average of 70/hour between 3-4 a.m. (1800-1900 UTC)
local time, but thick clouds covered much of Japan, so I was one of the
luckier few.

We have seen reports from Europe and North America of abnormal FM
propagation, but unfortunately here in the Far East I don't think anything
much happened, at least not that I noticed. It all seemed business as usual
on shortwave and FM, except the static noise was high on lower shortwave
bands.

Hope all of you have been able to see some of them, wherever you are!

Sonny

__________________________________________
Sonny M. Ashimori
sonny@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.serve.com/ashimori

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