Hi Mark

1) First, you have some misconceptions. Es (sporadic-E) very definitely does occur at night, if by "at night" you mean after the sun goes down. If you mean at 3 AM, no, it doesn't usually occur then (though sometimes it does). But the two primary time frames for Es to occur is in the morning until early afternoon, and from late afternoon into the late evening (often until 10-11 PM or beyond). During the winter Es season, openings tend to occur more often in the evening. During the much stronger summer Es season, openings tend to occur in the morning hours, but also occur in the evening hours as well.

The other thing to remember about sporadic-E is that it is seasonal (summer and winter) and that it is not dependent on the solar cycle as is the F2 layer propagation that functions mostly on the HF bands. (F2 can work as high as 6 meters during a solar peak period, the next one of which is due in probably four years or so. But this has NOTHING to do with Sporadic-E.)

Typically, when sporadic-E occurs during one of the regular sporadic-E seasons, it is extremely strong. In fact, Es is arguably the most efficient propagation mode known. So the signals in these cases are not weak, and you find very few people working JT6M when the band is wide open on sporadic-E. They are usually down on SSB or CW, because that is where most everybody else is going to be. :-)

Weak, marginal sporadic-E can occur at the very beginning of an opening, or at the end of an opening, or when the sporadic-E cloud is just barely within the path you're trying to work. And JT6M works very well for this kind of sporadic-E. But this is fairly rare compared to the strong, barn-burning sporadic-E that you get during the spring and summer months.

A more likely candidate for JT6M is ionoscatter, which is an extremely inefficient propagation mode. Signals are always quite weak, and in fact high power and large antennas are usually required to make a solid QSO using this propagation mode, even with JT6M. People have experimented with ionoscatter using JT65A on 6 meters, and the results of this have often proved interesting. QSOs can be made using moderate power and antennas because the signals can be decoded well below the noise floor.

2) Your basic assumption is correct, but there is more to it. Sporadic-E occurs only infrequently on 2 meters, and rarely if ever does it occur on 2 meters over a widespread area of the country. You probably know that the Es MUF determines how high in frequency sporadic-E propagation will work at any given moment and for any given path. The Es MUF doesn't go above 144 MHz that often (though it does do so several times a summer for most hams in the temperate zones). Sporadic-E at 220 MHz and above is so rare as to be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Meteors are a different matter. Meteors provide the metallic atoms (by frictional ablation) in the E layer that later on get ionized by high-speed wind shear and produce sporadic-E propagation. However, the initial ionization of these atoms takes place during meteor ablation because of the heating due to meteor-atmosphere friction, and this process can produce plasma densities momentarily much higher than those produced by typical E-layer wind shear events. This is why you do get meteor scatter propagation at 432 MHz, but never sporadic-E propagation (as far as we know). There are two different methods here of producing free electrons (plasma), one of which (meteoric ablation) is more energetic than the other.

So the answer to your question is, you will ALWAYS have better luck with either meteor scatter or sporadic-E on 6 meters, because it is more likely that the MUF created by whatever is producing ionization (meteor burn or wind shear or whatever) is above 50 MHz and below 144 MHz the majority of the time. When you try to do meteor scatter at 144 MHz, you are basically looking for those very much shorter periods when the MUF exceeds 144 MHz during a meteor burn. When you look for sporadic-E on 144 MHz, you are basically looking for a pretty unusual sporadic-E event that occurs in exactly the right spot, with another guy on the other end of that exactly right spot doing the same thing you're doing. When it happens, it's a real kick, but it's not a sport for those who have trouble with delayed gratification. If you're that more ordinary type of guy, like me, 6 meters is your band when it comes to sporadic-E.

3) For meteor scatter work, it is not critical to have your time EXACTLY synched to atomic time (though doing so is very simple and is a set-and-forget operation). You should be accurate to within 0.5 seconds IMO, but that's just IMO.

Now, for EME (moonbounce), you have a whole different matter involved, and that is because it MATTERS what the exact amount of time is that it takes a signal to travel to the Moon and back, which must be measured in small fractions of a second. I'm not going to get into this, because I'm not an EME subject matter expert. My advice is to simply download Dimension-4 (D4) from the web, install it, set it up, and fuhgeddaboudit. Then it's a non-issue.

4) Guys like to tell you that you can work meteor scatter with 10 watts to a wet noodle -- or even 100 watts to a dipole -- because they want to be positive and not discourage anybody. And you can -- once in a while. If a "once in a while" meteor scatter QSO is good enough for you, then great. For more effective, predictable, and regular meteor scatter communications, though, you need a yagi antenna, preferably at least 5 elements, and up at least 30 feet. That's pretty much a minimum configuration for a 100 watt station if you want to make MS QSOs regularly over distances up to about 1,000 miles.

Second, just listening to 50260 will not allow you to hear everything that is going on. Most schedules made on PJ are set up for frequencies other than the calling frequency. Meteor scatter really isn't something you monitor for -- though during the Random Hour periods on Saturday and Sunday mornings, there are a lot more guys on the calling frequencies. And remember, just because you don't have a beam doesn't mean the other guy doesn't have a beam. He probably does, and it is probably NOT pointed at you. If he is not pointed at you and you are listening on a dipole, it is vanishingly unlikely that you are going to hear him.

Now, there are going to be guys who come on this board after reading this and chastise me heavily for saying these things to you, but I'm just telling you the truth. If you want to really make regular contacts on MS, you need more of an antenna than a dipole, and a little more power doesn't hurt either. Most successful guys on meteor scatter run a solid-state amplifier running anywhere from around 200 watts up to maybe 500 watts. I personally run around 800 watts most of the time.

One thing you have to remember about meteor scatter: every dB counts. An FSK441 signal at the noise floor is probably not decodable. An FSK441 signal 3 dB above the noise floor is easily decodable. 3 dB is the amount of power gain you get when you double your power, say from 100 watts to 200 watts. Going from 100 watts to 200 watts isn't going to make any difference at all on SSB or CW, running on regular ionospheric propagation modes, but on meteor scatter, 3 dB is huge. It is often the difference between QSO and no QSO.

It's also possible that there are things about using the WSJT software that you don't know or aren't doing in the most optimum way. A book still needs to be written about this. I'm probably going to write it one of these days; I just need to find the time. The best thing to do is to get on the phone with somebody who is really experienced and knows the best practices.

5) I understand your reluctance! But if you heard absolutely nothing, NOT transmitting is always a good idea. You did the right thing! I think you just need a real antenna. The simple truth is, meteor scatter is not for everybody. If you live in a situation where putting up a small 6-meter yagi (maybe 12 feet long) is simply not possible, then you may need to consider that meteor scatter is not going to be possible for you, in the same way that EME is not going to be possible for you or working 160 meters is not going to be possible for you. But if you can put up a 5-element or even a 3-element yagi and get it up maybe 20 feet (less than that really won't work very well except for short paths), I'm sure there are guys here, including me, who would be very happy to help you try to make some contacts on MS. Please fell free to give me a call any time on my cell (505.228.5505) and we can talk some more.