What is good station quality?
#2
Congratulations about getting your new Blue on line!

You ask some good general questions but I for one don't think there is one answer.

First, you need to have your gains (as tempting as it is to have them high and see all the strokes thousands of miles away) set so that you don't send a lot of noisy signals, and while the controller seems to do some filtering, sending junk to the servers only makes them do more work filtering out stuff (I'm sure it doesn't work exactly like that, but for my simple understanding it has helped me).

When we get some nearby storms here, you'll see that if the gain is too high (and I think others can comment on whether or not the first or second value in the settings page about which is the most beneficial  such as 8 x 4 or  4 x 10 etc being the best combination) just play with it considering your local noise environment, so when you get storms closer, you won't go into interference mode as shown on the controller generated status page.

Next I like to look at the Lightningmaps.org page and go to the Station tab and scroll down (after making sure you are logged in and your station number is being reported as the data you're looking at) to the graph showing strikes overall and then i n darker blue your station's strike count.

Now I'm showing very few compared to the region total, but as storms are within a thousand miles or closer, I am happy to see my dark blue portion close to the total number reported.  I use this as a guide to how my station is hearing valid strokes.

One thiing with the system having auto mode is that it for me at least last year wasn't working quite as I thought the whole plan should, that is the servers knowing I'm getting a lot of signals and even reporting an interference mode that they would talk back to my controller and modify the values down to lower levels, hasn't worked out.  So I set my values and if I'm around home as the storms get closer, usually a 100 miles or so less, go in to the settings and decrease the values for awhile.  I've had storms go by with strikes just a few miles away and the system continued to work, while my older red with higher values might be out for 30 seconds or so with very active strikes.  So it is like riding a bike and just adjust to keep it OK.

A few years ago when I was just getting started and the RED system was being rolled out there were few stations and all had their gains set very high to try to hear the more distant strikes but also cover areas where no stations were on line.  It was hard to have the mind set of some of these station pioneers to back down, not reporting signals heard in northern US or Canada that were being generated down in mid-Mexico. 

It's still fun and amazing to me to watch the participation map to see my station dot turn purple here in Wisconsin while the storm is in the Florida panhandle, but that's part of the fun.

I'm sure there are others with vastly more indepth experience than me and more understanding of exactly how the internal code is working that I don't know about, but hope this helps you as you gain experience with your new diversion.  Yeah I spend a LOT of time watching the maps as storms move in, and when we get a close passage, I zoom in a lot watching the expanding rings to see if I hear thunder when it reaches me.  A great hobby, and better than a Lava Lamp.
Dale
Stations: 976, 1505
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Messages In This Thread
What is good station quality? - by cbhiii - 2017-03-27, 23:50
RE: What is good station quality? - by Dale.Reid - 2017-03-28, 12:46
RE: What is good station quality? - by malyan - 2017-03-28, 15:06
RE: What is good station quality? - by cutty - 2017-03-29, 02:24
RE: What is good station quality? - by cbhiii - 2017-03-28, 16:02
What is good station quality? - by cbhiii01 - 2017-03-30, 03:30

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