From: kymhorsell@gmail.com   
      
   After pulling a feverish all-nighter processing the data and   
   uncovering a ton of bugs, my simple passive radar seems to have   
   detected its first unusual object and got some data down on tape.   
      
   My setup is a very simple system built in a matter of an hr from junk   
   I had on hand. Two old TV antennas were bolted to a gal pipe on   
   the side of my garage so one pointed SW and the other SE.  Two old   
   "Realistic" short-wave radios were setup to send their audio output to   
   the stereo input of an old desktop that faithfully recorded about 1000   
   samples per sec from each channel over the course of an hr or so   
   starting around 8.30pm until 10.30 pm local time.   
      
   Several times in the past couple weeks I've seen a bright light or   
   lights travel right to left across the S horiz at various   
   elevations. The problem with bulky antennas attached to a hundredweight   
   of iron pipe -- it's not easy to move around so you have to set it up   
   and hope something walks into the mousetrap.   
      
   And about 9pm something did. This time it was too low down on the   
   horiz to see while I was out in the yard in front of the garage with   
   my most powerful glasses on. :) But I did spot a Rigel-bright light   
   gracefully sliding into the ESE or SE for 1-5 seconds. Just the kind of   
   thing I was hoping for.   
      
   Unfortunately with all the balloon shoot-downs it seems "things" have   
   gone a bit quiet around here and it was the only satellite I saw in   
   the session.  Also a regular feature of nights around here now --   
   around 9.30pm thin fast-moving clouds zoomed in from the S and quickly   
   clogged the whole sky up to viewing. But I left the rig running   
   another hr or so to see if I could catch anything else that might   
   cross that section of sky above the clouds.   
      
   Around 10.30pm it was knock-off time and I started the coffee maker up   
   for a long session of coding, swearing at hardware (and anything else   
   that displeased me) and trying to make sense of the numbers that had   
   been collected via the audio input.   
      
   And after lots of swearing and somehow burning out one of the radios   
   in the process, I've managed to convince myself I did actually get the   
   whole sequence in the data and what looked like something going off to   
   the SE had started a few mins earlier off in the SW and was "most   
   likely" (i.e. the proposed model is the simplest having an acceptable   
   fit with all the data gathered) something around 50 km away travelling   
   in a straight line from west to east well inside the atmosphere and   
   possibly moving around 3000 kph.   
      
   While the 2 antennas give you a very rough estimate of a bearing on   
   reflected radio signals, it turns out if you have a whole heap of such   
   measurements and assume e.g. the thing is travelling in pretty much a   
   straight line at constant altitude you can eliminate many many possible   
   paths the thing might take and end up with rough estimates of speed   
   and distance. There are some little "dings" in the data that actually   
   help with this and I hadn't realized at the start they would pop up.   
      
   The whole idea here is we are trying to use commercial radio stations   
   at the radar transmitter and interpret reflections from one station   
   coming in from various directions to figure out what is out there from   
   second to second.  As some object -- be it commercial jetliner or   
   Chinese weather balloon -- moves into certain critical spots the among   
   of radio signal that will bounce back into my direction goes up and   
   down. Where these peaks and valleys in the signal happen tells you a   
   lot about how the object is moving and where it is with respect to the   
   relevant transmitter.   
      
   In my case the radio stations being monitored all have a major   
   repeater in a mountaintop about 70 km to my SE. When some object is   
   e.g. 45 deg either to the left or right of that bearing you can   
   expected to hear a slight reflection of the radio signals coming from   
   the repeater.  When the object moves off those critical lines that   
   reflection rapidly drops off.   
      
   It turns out when an object moves into another critical point the   
   signal gets a louder reflection and you must assume the object must be   
   fairly close to the transmitter on that mountain. Because the power   
   reflected over this way drops off a the radar rate of inverse 4th   
   power.  But if the object is "very close" to the transmitter it drops   
   off only as the inverse 2nd power of the distance between the object   
   and me.  I.e. you can get a hint the object is close to the   
   transmitter and you know where the transmitter is -- so you know the   
   object is ~70 km from you as well.   
      
   The rest of the record showed only noise. The night up to that point   
   was very quiet. No commercial jets heard, seen not detected. Even the   
   usual "patrol aircraft" that circle the neighbour every hr or so most   
   of the night for some reason had the night off. So no other "pings"   
   are seen in the data.   
      
   I've put some very preliminary plots up on my web site   
    showing the power   
   coming in the left channel (SE in reality -- it may be marked NW in the   
   files because the antennas and software normally point N), the right   
   channel, and a smoothed total.   
      
   Another plot gives the estimated bearing (S being "0" in this case   
   with +ve degrees to right; -ve to left).   
      
   You can see a big spike late in the session on the left where it's   
   presumed the object was quite close to the repeater 70 km away.  In   
   some versions of the software there was also a teeny spike in the   
   right channel in a symmetric position over in the SW perhaps in a   
   position where radio could travel between the transmitter in the SE,   
   over to the approaching object, and some tiny part of it bounce back   
   over this way.   
      
   There was a bit of a glitch (on the right) as the object moved due S   
   and didn't get a signal into either antenna, then as it approached the   
   repeater station in the SE there is another, smaller, spike on the   
   right channel. How that energy got in there is not explained. The   
   antennas are cheap TV yagis and maybe they have significant "side   
   lobes" and are not as directional as you might hope.   
      
   All in all a worthwhile evening even if I feel a bit sick from   
   drinking coffee most of the night.   
      
   --   
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   [continued in next message]   
      
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