Trying to understand the lightning signals
#1
Hello Group I'm new to the group, my Name is Bill and I live in Yuba City, CA, USA. I have always had a big interest in storms and lightning and have made several detectors, just simple pulse detectors with a beeper and flashing LED. Well I have had it on the back burner to build a detector that would give me azimuth too. I was on the web page from Holland I thing for the Lightning Radar LR detector. Well I noticed it was no longer being used due the the passing of the guy who developed it, rest his sole. 

Sense I had the parts I made a PCB and put it together and Have been playing with it trying to learn from it. To my surprise I can pick up lightning a lot father away than I thought I could. From California I can see storms from the east coast of the US. My setup is  a pair of opamps and 2 fairrite loop antennas both about 200mm long. I have the antennas shielded they are connect to the opamp board in a water tight box right next to the antennas and I have cat 5 cable running to the ham shack right below it. Antennas are running NS and EW and both are tuned to 10 khz. 

OK here is where my question comes in. right now I'm connected to a digital Oscope and I set the trigger high enough so only a lightning pulse sweeps it. But I noticed that most of the time one trace is out of phase with the other one 180 degrees. I took care to make sure both antennas are connected the same ie ground and signal. Is this normal that the NS and EW signals would be out of phase 108 degrees or do I need to swap the leads on one antenna? 

I plan on connecting it to my sound card and play with it on Spectrum Lab but want to make sure it is connected right to begin with. Every once in awhile I get a signal that looks to be in phase. I hope to soon to setup the system used here using TOA, but for now I want to learn as much as I can and maybe write some software to use this setup as a portable system I can use while RVing. 

Thanks and I hope this post is OK here on this Forum, if not delete and let me know, I want to stay in good terms with the group. Also Have been watching the Biltzortung real time maps and I have to say Wow! what a great system.
Bill Verstelle
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Trying to understand the lightning signals - by N7OQ - 2016-01-30, 04:07

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