John, The best time for meteor scatter is at night or early morning. At that time, your side of the Earth is facing the direction of the Earth revolving around the Sun, increasing the speed at which meteors and dust plow into the ionosphere, giving better "burns." The worst time is around noon. For general info, Google "meteor scatter." Read the WSJT-X manual. It is pure gold. MSK144 encodes and decodes very differently than FT8. The best direction depends on where you live. If you are in Texas hill country, your best directions may be your lowest horizons. If you are in the flats, anywhere. You will also get a big help from ground gain. Experiment. Here in the South SF Bay, my best direction is north, because it is flat that direction, and I can work CA, OR, WA, and BC. You will need to use RC5 MSK144. While the FT8 crowd are still using mostly 1.9.1, ping jockeys upgrade immediately. 'Cause they're cool. (Just kidding. I have DXCC and WAS on FT8). The best way to get started is to make schedules on the Ping Jockey site https://www.pingjockey.net/cgi-bin/pingtalk. Ask questions, people are happy to help. Some ops never get on Ping Jockey, and you can make random contacts. Those are the most fun. Another great thing about MSK144 is that it will work with a NB. Being in Silicon Valley, I ride my K3's NB controls like a bucking bronc. But early in the morning noise is usually low, except for my idiot neighbor's "pest repeller." MS is good year-round. I have been on during meteor showers when there was no increase in "rocks." I have also been on during meteor showers when it was totally insane. Be very patient. I have worked guys in one minute. I worked a guy last week that took an hour--40 minutes for the final exchange. That was a massive burn lasting 10 seconds. Go figure. It is a lot like working QRP--some days you get skunked, some days you get 599+10 with your KX1. Feel free to email me off-list. 73 Eric WD6DBM
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