| Summary: | This thesis describes the development, modification and refinement of a high-powered hybrid Stratospheric Tropospheric (ST)/meteor radar at the University of Adelaide’s Buckland Park (BP) field station. This thesis also describes the process of statistically comparing results obtained from multiple co-located independent measurement sources. Also included are statistical comparisons made between meteor radars at BP,Darwin, Northern Territory, and Davis Station, Antarctica, with other independent sources of measurement. Previous meteor radar systems have generally been low powered (∼8 kW peak) and as such could only afford low count rates at frequencies of the order of 50 MHz. While it has been shown that the echo detection rate is inversely proportional to frequency to the power of 1.5, the use of lower VHF frequencies within Australia is restricted by government regulations. As such, this has lead to the development of a high powered meteor radar system at 55 MHz which has served to facilitate higher echo rates at this frequency. The aim of improving the echo rate is to improve the statistical accuracy of results generated by the meteor technique. Also presented are descriptions of the meteor radar systems used to provide the data for this study and the basic principles of the meteor technique. Basic descriptions of the other systems and the techniques used to provide data for comparison are also presented. Two key components in the development of the high-powered meteor system are the high-powered all-sky crossed-dipole transmit antenna and the high-powered 1:2 splitter-combiner required to drive the antenna. The antenna was designed using standard equations for Yagi-Uda antenna design found in literature and modeled using the EZNEC modeling programe. After successful modeling, the antenna was prototyped and refined into a low powered version to investigate the antenna’s performance characteristics. Once the performance of the antenna was verified, the process of upgrading the antenna to handle the full output ...
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