Antarctic station

[RichoAnd]

Impossible to tell because we don't know the sorroundings.
Generator have a huge magnetic field, but placed in a metalhouse (faraday) will short E-field.

[W7DRM]

Just wondering out loud here...

Does the fact that the South Pole is close to Antartica, have any impact on the magnetic fields produced by the lightning strokes? I.E., are the calculations still valid for stations located at either the North or South Poles? Aren't the Earth's magnetic fields concentrated at the poles and thus wouldn't that have an effect on lightning-induced magnetic fields?

Sorry, just questions, but no answers...

[Knickohr]

Any updates ?

2 stations now running in Southern Africa and detecting strokes 11,000km away. So it should be possible to run a station in the Antarctica too !

Where will this station be located ?

Thomas

[HamelGre]

If you put the station right at the pole, all directions will be North....  

Seriously, industrial rated electronic components are rated to -40C. You may need to place the amplifiers and controller in heated cabinets. Of course, taking care that the heater controllers don't create noise. Sounds like a challenge.

Hammond makes some PTC cabinet heaters that might work. I have my RED system out in the garage and I use one in the cabinet there.

Hammond Heater Catalog

The parts that might cause the most problem will be the electrolytic capacitors. When the electrolyte freezes, the capacitance will be dramatically lower. I saw this effect in an automotive application, where the power supply got very noisy due to the capacitance change.

You might be able to substitute some parts for -55C "military grade" specification.

Greg H.