Meteors burn up in the upper atmosphere at a height of around 105km. The trail will reflect our radio waves best if the trail is orientated as shown in figure 1, which is taken from Meteor Burst Communications The Gap Filler by Daniel E. Warren, http://www.borg.com/~warrend/metburdu.html. You can calculate the probable best beam direction in both azimuth and elevation. Computer programs take care of this, so do not worry. For a start just beam on the great circle bearing.

Figure 1: Meteor reflection Geometry

Meteors may come at any time, but sometimes they come in showers which can be predicted. During showers there are more meteors than usual and QSOs are easier to make. Most work on 144 MS is done during showers, where 144.300 may sound like 14 MHz in the bursts. A MS trail reflects 50MHz longer than 144, so it is easier to work MS on 50MHz. Actually you do not need to wait for a MS shower at all to make QSOs on Six.

Meteors on Six sound like brief enhancements of the signal you are listening for. Out of the noise pops your QSO partner at 59+ for mostly less than a second, but then he fades fast away again. Sometimes bursts are many seconds long and you may be lucky to make a QSO in one burst. But as ever on Six you have to be fast..

You should prepare yourself to make the QSO in small bits of mostly a few seconds. There is a procedure for MS-QSOs agreed on in IARU Region 1. If we all follow it, the QSOs are much easier. Here is an extract of the official procedure from: http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/vhfc/iaru.r1.vhfm.4e/5B.html