Blitzortung.org Forum

I have my System Blue online. Station 1745. 

What is an acceptable noise floor value? 

The antenna is about 2m above the floor near the west wall of a room in my house. Basically it's laying on a chest of drawers. Is that going to cause reception issues? This, of course, is temporary.

Welcome aboard. I just came online last Saturday.

I'm running a noise floor of 15-25mVpp using 10 x 10 gains on my 1m H-field loops.

I should also mention that my loops are sitting up high above the garage. 12-15' I'm guessing.

You're area may not be as 'quiet' as mine however.

An acceptable noise floor takes a lot of things into account. What values are you seeing now and what are your gains?

(2017-04-01, 20:34)cbhiii01 Wrote: [ -> ]Welcome aboard. I just came online last Saturday.

I'm running a noise floor of 15-25mVpp using 10 x 10 gains on my 1m H-field loops.

My noise floor is 23 - 25 mV p/p with two ferrite antennas at 90° from each other, horizontal. I have disabled the H field amplifiers for now (no antenna). Other than that I haven't made any changes to the default setup. 

Current Status

(2017-04-01, 20:55)cbhiii Wrote: [ -> ]I should also mention that my loops are sitting up high above the garage. 12-15' I'm guessing.

You're area may not be as 'quiet' as mine however.

An acceptable noise floor takes a lot of things into account. What values are you seeing now and what are your gains?

We must have made a post about the same time. See the screenshot above your latest post

I see in your image that you are using the 2A channel which is where the E-field is normally found using the smaller amplifier with the F-type connector end and 2 screw terminals. I would have expected you to be using the larger H-field amplifier with the 6 screw terminals and RJ45 connector for the ferrite rods connection.

Was this your intention? If so, then I'm not familiar with this setup.

I (and most others) have their loops connected to the larger amplifier in pins 1 & 2 and 4 & 5 for each loop. Those will show up in the controller on channels 1A (red) and 1B (green), once re-enabled.

I am currently running with a noise floor of about 40-60 mVpp.

I am using some home made ferrite 9.5 x 210mm antennas and for the E field a copper wire about 350mm long.

My station seems to work very good despite a lot of local noise in the neighborhood.

(2017-04-01, 21:09)cbhiii Wrote: [ -> ]I see in your image that you are using the 2A channel which is where the E-field is normally found using the smaller amplifier with the F-type connector end and 2 screw terminals. I would have expected you to be using the larger H-field amplifier with the 6 screw terminals and RJ45 connector for the ferrite rods connection.

Was this your intention? If so, then I'm not familiar with this setup.

I (and most others) have their loops connected to the larger amplifier in pins 1 & 2 and 4 & 5 for each loop. Those will show up in the controller on channels 1A (red) and 1B (green), once re-enabled.

I have no idea what I'm doing lol and it's showing. 

I'm going to switch to the H-field amplifier. I've got significant weather in central TX, about 300 miles away, and no strikes recorded. Not even one.

That's a lot better but in auto it went to interference mode at first. It seems to be settled down now.

There letters L, A, and P show up next to the two Channel numbers. That seems to correlate to strikes in the screen

Yeah looks good now.

I run my unit in Manual mode because the Auto is not very consistent when the remote server tries to control the unit. I think most people use Manual.

With that and having your gains set at 10 x 10 for amp 1, and your threshold voltage at 120mVpp, that should be a good starting point and keep you out of interference mode. If not then you can back off the gain on the amps.

(2017-04-02, 04:43)Mike6158 Wrote: [ -> ]There letters L, A, and P show up next to the two Channel numbers. That seems to correlate to strikes in the screen

This information on "L A P" was passed on to me yesterday from another Forum via 'miraculon' via Cutty (Mike):

L = Signal is below the threshold
P = Signal is below threshold * adjustable_percentage
S = Spike detected
M = Amplitude too high (currently not enabled)
A = Automatic filter by amplitude
These indicate the status on that channel for that signal in controller firmware filters, (NOT the optional LP filters for BLUE).  

If the time above the graph is red, than NONE of the channels were sent.

If a channel is marked red, then it might not be used for sending:  

If filters flags like "L" or "A" are present on all channels, no signal will be sent ("AND" condition).

Others, like "S" need only one filtered channel, and the whole signal won't be sent.
40 is the fixed gain of the amplifier channel, which is hardware, firmware established and not adjustable.

I've also found that the WXForums Blitzortung section to be useful for questions too. Give it a try if you're interested here.

I've been on that site for about 24 hours. I saw your post just now. I think a lot of my signals don't get sent. Maybe that's normal. I have a lot of activity all around me right now, ranging from 50 - 200 miles. I have also have Auto Adapt to Noise and Auto Amplitude Filter checked.

I see lots of L and A right now, also red channels

(2017-04-02, 13:32)Mike6158 Wrote: [ -> ]I've been on that site for about 24 hours. I saw your post just now. I think a lot of my signals don't get sent. Maybe that's normal. I have a lot of activity all around me right now, ranging from 50 - 200 miles. I have also have Auto Adapt to Noise and Auto Amplitude Filter checked.

I see lots of L and A right now, also red channels

Yes, when the activity is close the noise floor goes up. I haven't experienced that yet first hand in Michigan. Auto adapt to noise might be good in that situation. I'll try that when the time comes for me. I have yet to find a place for my E-field antenna as well and play with how that works too. I'm guessing that when the H-field noise goes up, that the E-field antenna will be more useful since it's for closer signals, but I could be wrong.

Hello Mike,

Glad to see a station between Austin and Houston as it will help cover the metro areas. I'm just up Hwy 71 in Austin where I've been testing out the three Oakhill stations for a few weeks.

Automatic mode doesn't seem to be much use. It seems to place receivers into interference mode too often which tends to cause lots of signals not to be sent. I've been keeping mine in manual mode where a gain of 8x5 seems to work well when I look at the statistics from the server online.

Note that when storms are within a hundred miles or so of your receiver then you will experience a lot of atmospheric interference. Don't expect your receiver to be used in locating strikes as this frontal system passes through today. You need other stations outside the hundred mile area around the storms to do the locating instead. Just let it ride it out; there is no need locating the stroke that hit the tree in the front yard - you will know! I noticed my receivers going into interference mode with their fixed gains when the lightning approached Fredericksburg both times this week.

Using a shielded ethernet cable from the H-preamp to the controller made significant improvement over my noise floor. It shouldn't matter if you use CAT-5 or CAT-6 cable; their impedance does not matter given our frequency range of interest. 

I've since moved two receivers out to a shed away from houses and buildings where it is very quiet. Even with their fixed gain, I was receiving strikes ~2000 miles away (although only locating out to >1000 miles - but that is okay as there are better stations for those far-away strikes). The ferrite antennas are just laying on the bench with the pre-amp between them and 14 feet of shielded ethernet cable to the controllers. One system is inside the house still and seems to be performing just as well as the other two. Adding the shielded cable and moving the ferrite antennas away from the A/C power mains and breaker panel is all that I needed.

Regards,
Tim (AA5DF)

Quote:Just let it ride it out; there is no need locating the stroke that hit the tree in the front yard - you will know!

:-) True!! lol

Thanks for the info Tim. It helps me understand what to expect from my system. My antenna install sounds like yours except I used some candles (non-conductive and handy) to elevate it off the top of the furniture it's sitting on.

I've been trying to get a system from very early on. I was pretty happy when I received the email that I was inline to be able to order. In hindsight I wish I had bought one more. I'd love to put one out in the Big Bend area.

Should I be using H and E field? I am not using the E-field amp at the moment

Shielded ethernet cable sounds like a good idea. I've got an old barn about 100m from my house. It doesn't have power but I was thinking about installing a small solar system there and running my lightning detector and a couple of WSPR beacons (QRP Labs) on it. No AC will make for a much quieter environment.