On the mass distribution of faint sporadic meteors

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Abstract
Forward scatter and backscatter determinations of the amplitude distributions of underdense sporadic radio meteor echoes are described. The experimental results lead to an ionization distribution index of 3.13 and are shown to be consistent with an initial train radius of about 80 cm at a height of 100 km. Comparison of the ionization and luminosity distributions of meteor trains indicates a small mass dependence of the geocentric meteor velocity, which we suggest is due to the mass distribution index of meteoroids in retrograde orbits being higher than that of the meteoroid population as a whole.

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