New member, having some problems with H-field big interference bursts..

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So I noticed some threads about interference on Blue were moved to forums I can't access, so I hope i'm not doing this wrong. (I tried to navigate from the Member area to the forum to link my account as a Participant but it doesn't seem to have worked... Tried a few times..)

You can find a description on how to setup the account here: https://docs.lightningmaps.org/doku.php?...[]=account
It is too long ago that I did it, thus I'm not 100% sure this description is ok. If not I'd love to get a working description in order to update the wiki.

I got my Blue board finished yesterday (with the LTC filter chips on each channel, and so far two ferrite rods at 90 degrees horizontal; and the amplifier attached tot he H-field port via about 1m of Cat5e cable.)

Congratulations. Your station did send some data according to LMO.

Results have not been so good.  The unit has been going into Interference Mode (Burst) quite quite often and the stroke level compared to the station mean is very low. (My station is 2284, by the way.)

Nothing to worry about when powering up for the first time. The good message is: it works!

I did un-knot the knots on the ferrite rod leads, because I was worried this may somehow mess with the signal (I know now that that's unlikely to be the case and was probably a bad idea as it weakened the wire; at least the ferrite rods are not too rare right now) - but I did connect the knotted leads to + on channels A and B.  

Removing the knots is not required, they will not mess with the signal. Whether the knot is connected to + or - is not relevant for the detection of lightnings. The time of the signal is relevant for Blitzortung. If you have the knots at + you can detect the direction in which a stroke happened based on the phase of the signals. Cutty has a post descriging this. I'm too lazy to search this right now.

I did NOT solder the jumper pads on channels A and B on the back of the H-field amp as I interpreted this as needing to be done for loop antennas only.  I don't know if I read this wrong.

This is correct. No need to solder these jumpers on the H-field pre-amplifier for ferrite rods, no need to solder it with loop antennas using transformers. The only case in which it has to be soldered is for loop antennas without transformers.

Anyhow, performance has not been good. In automatic mode the system would just go into burst interference mode quite a bit.  In Manual, with default settings, less so, but I presume this isn't ideal in terms of gain being adjusted.

I've tried to figure out what's causing the interference. At first I was worried that I soldered on one of the filter chips wrong (The orientation is correct, i'm sure of, but maybe there was a bridge or I heated one of the chips too much - ) but for sure the interference signal stops the second I disconnect the H-field antenna.

Try following this guide: https://docs.lightningmaps.org/doku.php?...first_time

(I do not currently have E-field set up but I will shortly.)

No need to. You can participate with or without. It is up to you.

Anyhow, it seems that if I have the H-field antenna a certain level low to the ground, the burst mode interference begins;  if I elevate it too much, the burst mode interference begins as well.  For now I have it at a 'medium point' where it doesn't seem to detect this interference, (which honestly is about 5 feet off the ground) - but it seems that detection is very low.

Is your antenna close to PCs, Monitors, power supplies, any other source of electromagnetic noise? Try to get it as far away from such sources as possible. Others have been proposing mounting the antenna onto a camera tripod (I hope to remember the correct naming) and to move the antenna to find the sweet spot. According to some postes it can take weeks. to find a good place.

Is there anything obvious here I'm doing wrong?  If the ferrite rod leads come close to eachother in my (pvc pipe) H-field frame, is that going to cause a problem? Did I need to solder the jumper pads?  Is the knot anything more than an indicator? 

Sorry for all the questions, I spent a very long time waiting to become part of the Blitzortung project so I am very motivated to get my station working well... just of course there is going to be a learning curve here.

Thanks,
Michi

Doesn't look like there is anything obvious wrong. Your questions are welcome.

Klaus