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+--- Thread: Would a station in northern England be any use? (/showthread.php?tid=1489)
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Would a station in northern England be any use? - G3WGV - 2015-09-01
Hi all,
Just found this very interesting site and it looks like a fun thing to do. I see that there are lots of UK stations already but a fairly large gap in coverage between the Manchester area and Edinburgh. I'm in central Cumbria, up near the Scottish border, so more or less midway between the existing stations. I have a very quiet rural location and plenty of room to experiment with antennas, etc. Like many on here, I am a radio amateur, active on HF CW. I'm also a light aircraft owner/pilot, so I have more than a passing interest in the weather.
Would a station up here be of value, or is there already sufficient coverage in the UK?
Regards,
John
G3WGV
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - DelandeC - 2015-09-02
Hello John and welcome.
There are no restriction for installing a station. If you want to then, just bought the kit (when available).
You should know that the more stations are installed the best is the coverage.
If I was at your place, I would definetly set up a station there.
Btw, you can check coverage at http://www.lightningmaps.org/extra/coverage?lang=en&ratio=0&dist%5B150%5D=1&dist%5B500%5D=1&dist%5B2000%5D=1#cmap (but don't know if it is updated).
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - G3WGV - 2015-09-02
Thanks Clément. I've done some more research and it does look like a station here might be useful. Once the initial rush is over for System Blue I'll get one and aim to set it up in time for next year's thunderstorm season.
John.
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - carseman - 2015-09-02
John,
Your location would be a godsend.
We have no stations from here , just north of the River Tay down to the Humber.
Chris
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - G3WGV - 2015-09-02
Thanks Chris. It's a bit of a shame I didn't discover this earlier as I'd have quite enjoyed building the System Red. Never mind, I'll happily join the swelling ranks waiting patiently for Rhapsody in Blue and look forward to it as a winter build project. *Thinks* yet another GPS-trained pulse generator running here - about time I came up with a more integrated solution to reduce the number of GPS antennas!
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - Andrew.Instone-Cowie - 2015-09-02
How close would your station be to the Anthorn VLF transmitter?
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - G3WGV - 2015-09-02
I'm about 50km SE of Anthorn. Hopefully far enough away for it not to be a problem. Skelton is only about 25km away and that too has VLF transmitters, for purposes that I couldn't possibly comment on. Perhaps a high Q notch filter will be in order.
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - G3WGV - 2015-09-03
As a further thought, do high powered VLF transmissions affect this system in any deleterious fashion? NPL's 60kHz MSF is a keyed carrier wave transmission but the rise/fall times are quite slow. Skelton's VLF transmissions at around 20kHz are probably some sort of FSK (I really should take a listen). In both cases I expect the biggest problem would be amplifier blocking due to high signal strength rather than any sort of pulse detection anomalies.
I'm mindful of the need to avoid any circuitry in the antenna system that might affect timing, such as resonances within the VLF spectrum. This makes it difficult to reject unwanted signals - effectively the system is a baseband receiver with a few 10s of kHz bandwidth. Perhaps notch filters could be added, since these are in effect anti-resonances, but I don't know what unwanted side effects they might have. Fabricating something with sufficiently high Q would also be an interesting engineering challenge!
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - Steph - 2015-09-03
(2015-09-03, 10:53)G3WGV Wrote: As a further thought, do high powered VLF transmissions affect this system in any deleterious fashion?
VLF transmitters are a problem, but:
- magnetic antennas are directional, you can align them to supress one direction
- VLF transmitters have a very narrow spectrum. If it comes to spectral energy density, lightning strikes are on a broadband receiver much more powerful. So you may just need to reduce your gain and you can still detect strikes
RE: Would a station in northern England be any use? - G3WGV - 2015-09-04
It'll be interesting to see how this all works out when I can get my mitts on the kit. In the meantime I may just knock up a loop antenna, attach it to a baseband amp and see what signals my 'scope shows. Apart from some tinkering with MSF on 60kHz I've not really experimented with VLF before. But I've been playing with radio throughout much of the rest of the spectrum for 50-odd years.
John.