Curious About Setting Up a New Blitzortung Station — Any Tips?

[WonderNomad]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been following Blitzortung for a while and really enjoy seeing how global lightning activity gets tracked by so many volunteers. I’m now seriously considering setting up my own station and contributing data to the network.

Before I order a kit, I’d like to ask a few quick questions:
For a beginner, is it better to go for the System Blue or wait for any future hardware updates?

I’ve seen some amazing station setups on this forum and would love to learn from everyone’s experience.

Thanks a lot in advance for your advice and insights!

Best regards,
WonderNomad

[JamesLily]

Setting up a new Blitzortung station is an exciting project! To get started,  make sure you have a good location with minimal electrical noise and a clear view of the sky to maximize lightning detection accuracy. Carefully follow the Blitzortung hardware assembly instructions, paying close attention to antenna placement and grounding to reduce interference.

[GeezerD]

...  To get started,  make sure you have a good location with minimal electrical noise ..

So how do you determine the "minimal electrical noise" part before you buy a station?

I've read, perhaps here, that wandering around with an AM radio tuned between station at the low end of the dial, 540 KHz in the US, and listening for obvious noise when you got close to things was one way to do it. I didn't do it. I just got one because of seemingly sudden availability after long scarcity.

I'm starting to believe that the 800 amps of 238 kilovolt power on the web towers just east of my house might have something to do with station 3174's poor sensitivity  in that direction, compared to a guy just up the bay from me. I'm close enough to enjoy the corona noise from them when it's foggy, and if I trespass a little with an 8 foot fluorescent tube I can truthfully say that it is "shocking" when it suddenly illuminates,  but I have no idea how it contributes to any noise I might have. 

I might have to re-position the nulls on my loop antennas to see if it makes any difference, or to see if the 30-60 millivolts of noise reported by the receiver changes in any way.