Electric vs Magnetic antenna

[GilbertKE]

Hello, 

Does any one know the range (km) that Electric signal can detect? My guess is that Magnetic antenna (H) detects strikes in longer distances than Electric antenna. I see more detections (signals and  effectivity L) with ferrite antennal than E antenna.  

I am also thinking of adding a filter to Magnetic channel. Of the 3 H field channels, which would work best?

[kriu]

Hello, 

Does any one know the range (km) that Electric signal can detect? My guess is that Magnetic antenna (H) detects strikes in longer distances than Electric antenna. I see more detections (signals and  effectivity L) with ferrite antennal than E antenna. 

My "record" for H-field antennas is 11,000km. I live in Poland and the discharges received eg from Brazil and southern Africa.
But it was once like that - now I have set much smaller gain and range reaches max. up to 5000km - and this is how it should be.
We are moving away from long-range detection because it does not make sense.
Now we are moving towards smaller gains and greater efficiency.

[vk2him]

My E antenna is 100mm long and regularly receives over 8,000km - the furthest so far is 10,513.8km

[GilbertKE]

Hello, 

Does any one know the range (km) that Electric signal can detect? My guess is that Magnetic antenna (H) detects strikes in longer distances than Electric antenna. I see more detections (signals and  effectivity L) with ferrite antennal than E antenna. 

My "record" for H-field antennas is 11,000km. I live in Poland and the discharges received eg from Brazil and southern Africa.
But it was once like that - now I have set much smaller gain and range reaches max. up to 5000km - and this is how it should be.
We are moving away from long-range detection because it does not make sense.
Now we are moving towards smaller gains and greater efficiency.

Thanks. What about E-field antenna? I am in Kenya, and no other Bliz system close.

[vk2him]

My "record" for H-field antennas is 11,000km. I live in Poland and the discharges received eg from Brazil and southern Africa.
But it was once like that - now I have set much smaller gain and range reaches max. up to 5000km - and this is how it should be.
We are moving away from long-range detection because it does not make sense.
Now we are moving towards smaller gains and greater efficiency.

My E antenna is 100mm long and regularly receives over 8,000km - the furthest so far is 10,513.8km. I live in Australia and those very distant signals came from Japan, India and off the coast of South Africa. I am a Amateur Radio operator and find it challenging and interesting to receive radio signals of any type from a distance - from the 1Ghz ADS-B aircraft signals I pickup from my FlightRadar24 receiver to the vlf lightning signals, making/modifying/improving antenna and the equipment makes it interesting for me. The "tuning" I have done with my blitzortung system to pickup very distant signals has also improved my ability to receive more local signals - my stats show I'm picking up over 82% of all lightning events across the continents of Australia and New Zealand. My magnetic antenna are 2 x 200mm ferrite rods and it took a lot of trial and error to find a position for them and to align them properly to reduce the effects of an electric fence on a rural property that adjoins mine. The electric fence increases the signals I receive due to the arcing and reduces my "efficiency", particularly in windy weather which causes a lot more sparks on the fence due to vegetation brushing the fence. If I wound back the gains to avoid these sparks, it would reduce the effectiveness of the Oceania region since Australia/New Zealand is an enormous area with only a fraction of the blitzortung receivers installed in USA and Europe - we need as many receivers as possible with the ability to receive long distances until our installed blitzortung population increases dramatically. I see you are in Africa with the same reduced population of installed receivers, so your efforts to improve your reception is exactly what I would be doing as well. My E antenna receives the majority of my distant strikes as I have it's gain set relatively high at 16 x 10 with noise adaption enabled - it normally operates at 10 x 10 with 60mv threshold. In comparison, my H antenna are 5 x 2 with one having 90mv threshold and the other which is more parallel with the electric fence set at 110mv - this is in full manual mode with no noise adaption.

[cutty]

The e field is very sensitive... because of that using it for long distance signals can cause excessive short range triggers with nearby cells, and system interference mode which wouldn't 'normally' occur using H only,... the original idea was to utilize it's data in a shorter range (lower gain settings) mode for better data on short range sferics.

First, do you really need a filter option? All anyone could do is 'suggest' based on looking at your signals....
....no one can predict best channels for you.
Personally, I installed in all channels, though they don't help at all with my 8 - 20 kHz intermittent noise without degrading
my locating ability.

[allsorts]

First, do you really need a filter option? All anyone could do is 'suggest' based on looking at your signals....
....no one can predict best channels for you.
Personally, I installed in all channels, though they don't help at all with my 8 - 20 kHz intermittent noise without degrading
my locating ability.

Yeah, if you can work without the filters do so, the system does appear to work better without them. I've got the chips in all four channels but only one is actually enabled. Of the three loops one is horizontal so doesn't pick up very much of the two nearby VLF transmitters, one is orientated for minimum pick up and the third rotated as far as I can get away with such that a 19kHz filter reduces the VLF transmitters to the same level as they are on the other two loops.

[GilbertKE]

Thanks for the information, I also noted the system works better without filters.