I have talked about this project for about 4 months now, and it is finally a reality, but I do need another station a lot closer to me than San Antonio Texas, as the bottom pic shows I am seeing some strikes out there. I have altered the gain and the thresholds today to get a better pic and something more meaningful and get rid of the local stray "rubbish" from electric fences etc.

Tokoroa ULD Lightning Radar

Any white, yellow or blue dots you see on the Pacific image are what it is about - however it makes for a very narrow band of visible region between the two of us over such a long distance - radius is 8000km. That's why I need someone much closer to me.



There were a few much earlier on but only single shots visible for 60mins.

Project file to be created later on.

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I would be willing to look at a south island station.

A great device!

Graeme - happy new year mate

I'm hooked up to a Perth station and have been getting some great results.

Cheers
Colin.

http://www.41south.net.nz/weather/picture4.png

p.s. must have a chat to you in the next couple of weeks about configuring the histogram - great stuff

Sorry I started "Edit"-ing your post instead of "Reply"-ing to it

Yeah - thanks for that! Still on vacation and haven't done anything on the house front for a week now - I sort of got distracted!! It has sort of worked first time for me - just taking things slowly... but Gerry has helped a lot using Yahoo Messenger - msn didn't seem to work so well for me... we even spoke on headset one time - but his southern drawl was a bit hard to decipher with all the internet echoes... But he really helped me with the sync business and all of a sudden everything fell into line. Using -45dB as the selected threshold.

Catch you of an evening perhaps? Although there is cricket on right now in the big smoke... Histogram - it sort of fell into place I think. not sure of his Lat and Lon settings though, waiting for a reply from him. I have that exe in the same folder. We really need someone in Nthn Qsld and one in Tasmania!! :D

Cheers - and have a cold one for me while you're at it!

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Just a note to the sceptical - I am too!! I have found a group of hits related to my electric fence (now turned off) and my neighbour has one too, so there are some false hits/noises out there - the bane of all AM radio comms, but they would be ignored during a correlation with one or two other stations for local triangulation. I have also been toying with the latency of the strikes as well. I am also waiting for a friend with a GPS to assist in final alignment.

It certainly is a great collaboration of research folks doing some extraordinary work for nearly free... the main program is free with a minor limitation and a one off fee of 75euro I think for registered version. Other assisting software tools are free as well. The one item you must order and purchase is a low noise filtered preamplifier with 100:1 gain (adjustable) for NZ$105 landed when the NZ$ was US$0.53 if I recall. Plus whatever paraphenalia you have to purchase for the build of the antenna whichin my case came to around $150 but I can defintely see some shortcuts (cheaper) and more compact designs for an attic mounted unit provided there is a tile or non metallic roof.

I will post this as a project soon.

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I will look forward to that. I can't afford a wx station just yet, so this may be a great alternative

Check the image at top of thread now - do a Refresh, and you will see a local connection now with 41South in Wellington and follwing the storm out to the East of ChCh. Finally got some more info on setups and opening ports on my Router. Wroking now. Note the strikes are still coming in conformal bands - something someone with better knowledge of AM transmissions will help us with.

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Great stuff, mate!

Antenna is now relocated as the metal clad garage and flat was blinding the western view - ie the Tasman Sea and the approaching system. It now correlates with Colin for this approaching wet weather and some possible strikes north of here up to Bay of Islands region.

I really need to get it elevated as I am sure the garage will still be "bending" the wave some - at 11kHz, it will get influenced by magnetic objetcs and steel cladding.

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