2017-03-29, 17:45
(2017-03-28, 12:46)Dale.Reid Wrote: Congratulations about getting your new Blue on line!
You ask some good general questions but I for one don't think there is one answer.
Welcome, now the fun starts as Dale says there is no one answer. A lot depends on the electro-magnetic enviroment that your station finds itself in. My station is "remote rural" so there is very little general electro-magentic noise compared to urban or industrial areas but I have 2 VLF transmiitters around 20 and 30 miles away that totally swamp the receiver without careful use of antenna polar patterns and the filters.
(2017-03-28, 12:46)Dale.Reid Wrote: First, you need to have your gains (as tempting as it is to have them high and see all the strokes thousands of miles away) set so that you don't send a lot of noisy signals,
Agreed, keep an eye on the number of strikes within say 2,000 miles and compare against how many "strikes" your station is reporting. They ought to be broadly similar, pay particular attention when real strikes are low, is your station still reporting hundreds or even thousands of "strikes".
(2017-03-28, 12:46)Dale.Reid Wrote: When we get some nearby storms here, you'll see that if the gain is too high (and I think others can comment on whether or not the first or second value in the settings page about which is the most beneficial such as 8 x 4 or 4 x 10 etc being the best combination) just play with it considering your local noise environment, so when you get storms closer, you won't go into interference mode as shown on the controller generated status page.
Which way round to have the two gain figures has been mentioned several times in the forums but can I remember which way round it is? Nope, have a search. B-)
I'm under the impression that the system works best with stations reliably reporting strikes at around 1,000 miles from them. It's also distributed network, a strike that is only 10 miles from me will be 1,000 miles from quite anumber of other stations. So I don't have to worry about tweaking settings to report it, I need to leave my station listening for strikes near the stations reporting strikes near me.
(2017-03-28, 12:46)Dale.Reid Wrote: One thiing with the system having auto mode is that it for me at least last year wasn't working quite as I thought the whole plan should, that is the servers knowing I'm getting a lot of signals and even reporting an interference mode that they would talk back to my controller and modify the values down to lower levels, hasn't worked out.
See above... B-) My station is in auto but winter set in not long after I set it upn so I didn't have much chance to see how the station was going to behave. How near is "near", we get about one audible thunder storm year so thats within about 20 miles, out to a hundred miles there will be more.
(2017-03-28, 12:46)Dale.Reid Wrote: It's still fun and amazing to me to watch the participation map to see my station dot turn purple here in Wisconsin while the storm is in the Florida panhandle, but that's part of the fun.
Yeah, nothing quite like the first time you see the line and dot for your station light up. B-)
For those who are US geographicaly challanged, how far is Wisconsin to Florida? Like wise Canada to Mexico?