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+--- Thread: Detecting in other Zones? (/showthread.php?tid=2379)
Detecting in other Zones? - MooreGeo - 2017-11-11
Is there any way to be able to detect strikes in other zones in the world (Oceania or Europe). I'm just curious how far away I can detect strikes. Hawaii is the most distant location for me and I usually detect strikes there when they occur. Thank you all in advance
RE: Detecting in other Zones? - mwaters - 2017-11-11
Hawaii is a looong way from you! I have found that my System Blue does much better long-term, if I adjust it so that it's not that sensitive. What are your gains and thresholds set at? I see you're running a System Green (which I know very little about).
Nice lightning photos you have on Flickr! Do you have some of your antennas and their surroundings?
RE: Detecting in other Zones? - allsorts - 2017-11-11
My blue has detected strikes off the coasts of Ghana/Nigeria, 4000 ish miles away (6500km). But that was early on, since then I've wound the gains down and thresholds up, which I guesstimate has limited the range to a loose 800 miles (1200 km). It has also shoved my participation up to about 50% of signals sent, pity that the Effectivity S, M or L are glued to 0% as I only send a few hundred signals/hour compared to other stations few thousand and they only get 20% ish used.
RE: Detecting in other Zones? - MooreGeo - 2017-11-12
Like you noticed I'm on the 1st gen system green. My max distance strike is about 5200 miles (8500 km). I have to manually switch it with jumpers. I switch between 11 and 28 on the gain, any higher than 28 I pick up so many strikes it goes into interference mode. Plus I try to not send tons of unusable data and usually keep it on 11. When there is little lightning in America I can see that I'm picking signals up in Europe and Australia, but the don't register since they are out of my region. I attached the only pic of my antenna I could find real quick. I started years ago so I could see if there was enough lightning in storms to bother trying to photograph. Pretty neat hobby too.
RE: Detecting in other Zones? - pasense - 2017-11-12
MooreGeo,
the maximum distance depends on two factors: the strength of the lightning stroke and the attenuation on the way to your station. I know of research receivers that can detect the strongest strokes world wide. The strongest lightning is positive cloud-ground lightning which can have more than 400 kA of peak current. Those are the strokes that initiate often sprites above the thunderstorm clouds. The attenuation is low over the sea because of the good conductivity of sea water, so if you run a station close to shore in a region with low interference, you can easily detect strokes 10000 km away. This is basically the mode the wwlln network is running which covers the whole world.
RE: Detecting in other Zones? - MooreGeo - 2017-11-13
I would love to image a sprite, but small chance of that ever happening. I do image approaching storms hoping for a one in a million shot. But back to my original question, I know my station is capable of picking up strikes in other regions, is there any way to log them or change regions for a time to see what you can pick up?