catbert69

For doing meteor- and airplane-scatter stuff you need quite a bit of transmission power. The max. tx power of LoRa transmitters is way too low.

You can get a LoRa transmitter/receiver for like $5 and setup your own network. Documentation and datasheets are freely available. They are really not printing money with that technology.

There isn't any opensource modulation scheme that comes even close to LoRa.

That doesn't work well on 433MHz oder 868MHz. Ionosphere reflection stuff usually happens <30MHz.

On VHF/UHF it's usually atmospheric ducting where radio signals are getting reflected between two layers of air.

99% this was atmospheric ducting. Also LoRa is an incredibly robust modulation.