Antenna - The never ending story

[mwaters]

Thanks, Mike and Dries. No hard feelings at this end! :-)
(You sent me a message, but I cannot find it, sorry.)

Dries, just put an order in for another receiver! Eventually, you'll get it.

Mike, have you ever thought of making a short range H-field antenna for one of your three receivers? I don't know about you, but this seems like such a wonderful idea!

[mwaters]

After mulling @RichoAnd 's post, and seeing how poorly my stations perform when the lightning is very close, I would like to pick your collective and experienced educated brains about something.  

In the spirit of Richo's (our esteemed antenna expert) post above, I am seriously considering reducing the number of turns on one of my 2 stations (1977) to less than 4.

At some point in the past, in the context of a one meter diameter wire H-field loop, Richo declared that " 3 or 4 turns is enough for a System Blue".
Well, I used 4 turns on both of my stations, thinking that more is better. Should I have used just 3 turns?

• Would 3 turns be sufficient?
  
• Or would just 2 or even 1 turn be best?
  

How do my 4 turn loops compare to the ferrite-core loops that most folks purchased from @Egon?
Do they output more voltage? Is the gain the same?

However, my station does not perform as well as some others when lightning is close, the vast majority of which are using the ferrite loops purchased from Egon. This is the case regardless of how I change the gains or other settings.

For various reasons, at this time I cannot build Richo's design above. Nor can I do a lot of trial-and-error.

[mwaters]

... A piece of brake pipe ...

Please, exactly what is brake pipe?

"Brake pipe" is unknown here in North America. If you mean the hydraulic tubing used for automotive brake lines, it is all steel here.

[DelandeC]

@Mike: station 2601 running with copper loop w/ trafo since a couple of weeks.
So far, the performance is good on close strikes but on long distance this performs not so well.

[allsorts]

... A piece of brake pipe ...

Please, exactly what is brake pipe?

"Brake pipe" is unknown here in North America. If you mean the hydraulic tubing used for automotive brake lines, it is all steel here.

Steel the world over for fixed brake lines I should imagine. Copper is rather soft... It maybe "coppered" to try and avoid corrosion problems.

[mwaters]

... A piece of brake pipe ...

Please, exactly what is brake pipe?

"Brake pipe" is unknown here in North America. If you mean the hydraulic tubing used for automotive brake lines, it is all steel here.

Steel the world over for fixed brake lines I should imagine. Copper is rather soft... It maybe "coppered" to try and avoid corrosion problems.

Thanks, that sounds logical, Dave. I was thinking that perhaps they use hard-drawn copper (or a copper alloy) with a thick wall.

But I kind of question its conductivity due to the possibility that most of the 16 kHz ELF signal would likely be flowing through the steel underneath the outer copper coating. But @RichoAnd is pretty expert on this sort of thing.

[mwaters]

Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing an answer to my question here. https://forum.blitzortung.org/showthread...2#pid21382

[cutty]

copper-nickel alloy / about 85% copper...  and Richo designed the originals for aboout 30-300km range

[Benedict.Smith]

copper-nickel alloy / about 85% copper...  and Richo designed the originals for aboout 30-300km range

Hard drawn cupro-nickel is common over here in the U.K. I replaced all the mild steel pipes on one of my first cars with it, easily obtained from motoring suppliers.

[dupreezd]

This is what I used to build my 38cm coils. Fits nicely inside the ferrite core mentioned in the antenna document.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-4.../203654086

I don't used them anymore, so if anyone in the US is interested, let me know. I switched them out for the 300mm CSS I build. 

Dries