New Home Built ULD Lightning - Strikes at Home

[TokWW]

The last three years has seen some European Research guys get together and devise the Ultra Long Distance Lightning radar and feed info into Blitzortung in Europe. I built my unit over Christmas Vacation - I was on call at Kinleith Mill and despite being shut down, a few of us had to go out there and sort some things out... We didn't go away, so I built my antenna - two 1m square coils mounted at 90degrees. I had to purchase a specialised premamp with filters that feeds two channels into the sound card Line-input, trhen there were junction boaxes and cables etc, but the software is free with one minor limitation.

Anyway, you need to link to at least one other station to correlate the strikes, I initially linked to a friend in Texas to prove things worked and i saw us correlate strikes over by the Bahamas and by Antarctica and east of NZ. Then I got linked with 41South of Wellington and with a few mods to site mounting and location here, it became a reality to view NZ weather systems esp the one to the east of the SI, then came this evening.

With the antenna - a centre post and two arms per coil - and a friend, we hauled it to the top of some 5m high scaffold at home here and lashed it to the hand rails... It works by reading in the magnetic wave form as Amplitude Modulated pulse signal. And works on 10-11kHz and so is VLF radio waves. Unfortunately I do have several electric fences around here but they are cancelled with the correlation.

Anyway, attached links show the Lightning strikes we had in Sth Waikato today plus some later on out in the Bay Of Planty and some approaching Cape Reinga from the west in mid Tasman Sea. The project has cost about $250 and a fair bit of handyman time. but the reward was tonight when i got 4 dots on the map around home!! I did not know if Colin's was going to see strikes here over the mountainous terrain ov national Park and whatever else there is in the way... Tararuas, Ruahines etc... BTW we have had 21mm of rain since 8pm.

http://www.inmanavenue.com/lightningradar.html





Graeme

[Andrew Massie]

OH, I SOOOOOO WANT ONE OF THOSE! Simply awesome!!! Magnificent effort! How much wa$ the total co$t, Graeme?

[jamie]

WOW amazing. thats awesome. jeez well done there!

[TokWW]

Andrew - the Preamp was about NZ$110 landed, it has two independent power supplies on board to eliminate cross talk, and can be fed 12vac or two external DC power supplies at 12vdc (prefer uncontrolled even 14 volts) and the regulators on board and diodes will ensure the board is driven with + & - 9.6vdc. There is a cheaper version that could be made with 1" alkathene piping and a simple post with just two lower arms. It has to be tuned to the capcitors on the board one of which is 0.22uF and that corresponds to 18 turns of the wirre I used (std audio speaker wire - twin split and joined to be single contiunuous coil) for 11kHz. Lead to Q=45 and a gain of -105dB A few software utilities to share for the final design. As I said the working software is free.

The way I did it was more expensive than it needs to be. Probably about $150 materials. The wire was actually dearer than I expected. I needed 72m of single wire = 36m per coil of twin wire or 72m overall pair. Cheaper to buy a 100m reel/drum of it! If you have a non metallic roof then a smaller factor one could be made say800mm diam to hide away up there. It does need tin foil shielding around the hoime made cable. I used aluminium duct tape, or H&V alloy tape. But it also needs a gap at the top as well - Al = good conductor and would complete a "coil loop" itself. It gets earthed as part of the wiring.

I am about to write up a project on my Flickr photo site so will link from here. Time for bed - wow its 01:30!!

A link here for much more information:

http://users.edpnet.be/DanielV37/Detect ... m#Hardware

G'night!!

[Manukau heads obs]

great work there, and great to get such a good result (the key is getting that good trangulation alright!)

[TokWW]

We believe the noise out to the east of cape palliser maybe due to my electric fence noise and too much gain on my pre-amp (set by solder but can eb changed easily). The strikes I get from electric fences are definitely on the dB range chart always in the same positions. I temporarily rotated my antenna by 90deg and they moved exactly 90deg... so it was not a pre-amp board fault. The designers had not seen this effect before, surprisingly. But at least with correlation, you do not get them showing on the map - but I figure they may be causing some rogue effects as above.

For those interested, there are 20 spare preamps for sale in Europe just awaiting order and payment. Payment terms are by euro notes in the post or bank checque which adds an hefty surcharge. I have found the designer very, very helpful and explicit with his guidance for setting up the whole unit and settings in the software - still no full manual available yet, although I am learning fast and can add to what has been produced so far. There is one unit yet to be built in KeriKeri and a spare preamp already in NZ (in Tokoroa) which may be available for purchase. Another firend in Chrictchurch wishes to build one too.

Mods - I don't mind if you want to relocate this thread.

Graeme

[Tornado Tim]

Man that is awesome, I want 1!!!!
Was that in NZ dollars or Pounds?

[TokWW]

That was all in NZ$ but as the euro strenghtens and NZ$ weakens the actual may change too. I can take orders on your behalf and then it may be quicker to receive as I have a good relationship with him. You can pay by using the PayPal button on my website (Credit Card or PP a/c are ok) but I would have to sort out the price against NZ$ for a new order now - probably $120 for now.

I have a problem with my dear wife not wanting it in her garden... but it's neat and tidy and an engineering masterpiece I say... besides not many people go around the back... you can't win. I do have a field i can place it in but at the moment it is 5m up in the air... probably the best place for it. You can use CAT5E STP for the signal return and for the twin DC supply to it for any distance.

The system does not like steel metallic objects, sheds, roofs, pipes around it so careful thought has to be give as to where you are to place it outside. It is feasible to use a stormwater plastic pipe instead of a wooden post so it will be lighter than mine - but then I'm a farmer's son and posts and battens and nails/glue are first thought...

It does use the soundcard, but if you are using a mic for headset comms in Skype or Messenger then you will need a second soundcard. It will see a selection and ask which card to use within the software..

[ricky]

is there a link to the triangulated output? wow you were getting a lot of broadband signal from something overnight!
dont suppose they can take nexstorm strike direction data for your correlation? that could give a few more sites like here and Brians actually could probably split and filter audio band XY signals from the boltek antenna, it's pretty broad but obviously not the high Q and gain at that frequency for the long range stuff!
Are those spectrogram images from the detector input on your page?

[GreggWard]

Well done TokWW. You've done a great job. You've got me really interested.

[Shepherds Valley WX]

Very nice work indeed Graeme (And Colin at 41 South). I have been lurking and reading your other threads on the net regarding the build of the LD's. Very impressive! I am about to start work on Revision 3 of my 1-wire Station, and may be interested in this as a add n project. I have an old telephone pole 10m high that I could use for mounting of the detector array. Let me know if you do decide to import more boards for others in NZ and I may also place an order with you.

Awesome work!
Andrew

[TokWW]

is there a link to the triangulated output? wow you were getting a lot of broadband signal from something overnight!
dont suppose they can take nexstorm strike direction data for your correlation? that could give a few more sites like here and Brians actually could probably split and filter audio band XY signals from the boltek antenna, it's pretty broad but obviously not the high Q and gain at that frequency for the long range stuff!
Are those spectrogram images from the detector input on your page?

We're working with VLF magnetic waves at 10 - 11kHz hgh pass filtered. Unfortunately, electric fences generate lightning! Although if not correlated, it does not show on the map but it does on the -100dB gain range Radar pic. Yes I saw some more activity out towards Raglan last night from say TA. The designs of antenna are flexible but obviously have to be tuned with a capacitor for accuracy - number of turns, area of the loop and various other limitations - the options are in a utility prog for tuning the preamp anbd antenna for highest Q and best gain depoending on how much soldering of loops you are prepared to do!!

The link between stations is via an opened port and the routers and firewalls gave us a few hiccups with that. I don't know if the format is the same - well it has to be for Biltzortung to work. I have asked a similar question to the designer - in the link so that we may be able to set up a similar network and use a similar sum-mapped output to theirs in Europe taking in various varieties of lightning analysis software correlated outputs.

This is great! I have a guy just west of Brisbane who has a pre-amp and will set his station up in the next 6 weeks. He does need a design and plan though which I am working through now. Also another link from Tasmania woul be excellent too - I am working on that as well!

I see some strikes out along and past Coromandel today...

Graeme

[tgsnoopy]

It looks like you have to buy their preamp, is that the case? Maybe there are plans somewhere.

I'm getting curious.

[TokWW]

There is a link on my web page (in the first post) to the antennas and the pre-amp design - pdf - using two OP27's plus ordinary components. Someone else in UK has designed a Surface Mount board for it too. The cost is purely components and the three layer board and the one hour of labour he does to assemble it all. He really is not taking any royalties from it at all. You can follow the links on his website and even email him. Please mention me as a courtesy - thanks. Added link below:

Graeme Sutherland

http://users.edpnet.be/DanielV37/Detect ... x_full.htm

[TokWW]

getting good coverage of the sthn Tasman system all the way over to Sydney at the moment...

[Manukau heads obs]

looking very good now..you can see the "snail lines" now left by descrete cells!
http://www.inmanavenue.com/lightningradar.html

[TokWW]

Thanks for the url exposure Brian

- Sometimes with this system you get "bands/waves" of higher responsiveness and it may just be an aberration of an amplified gain in these synced lines/waves giving the image of more correlated strikes, something to do with AM Low Freq radio signal strength and tuning of the antenna and external influences - it sounds complicated but I am learning to determine truth from apparent truth... and I may not be describing the phenomenon correctly either... any Hams out there?

Its just that with this technology we are seeing things that people could hear on the radio but could not relate it in physics - I think... At times though, I do see a cell moving as the colours change through time... that is the key to watching for cell movement.

[Vertigo]

how often are you uploading the image to the internet?

[TokWW]

Its going up every 10 mins supposedly at a sequence of :11,:21,:31 mins etc The images are supposed to be created in the minute beforehand every ten mins. I can't change that in the software. Thanks for the query.