Hi Bruce,
Well, I have played quite a bit with my settings for both my H-field and E-field kits. After much playing, I wound up back at the default settings that Cutty has determined to be a good starting point. Mine are set as follows:
- Overall Settings:
- Manual Mode
- Auto Adapt to Noise - ON
- Auto Amplifier Filter - OFF
- Amp 1: H-Field
- Gain: 10 * 10 on both channels
- Threshold: 120mv on both channels
- Amp 2: E-Field
- Gain: 5 * 5 * 5 on all channels
- Threshold: 100mv on all channels
I have attempted to adjust gains when storms were in the M ranges but never was able to really get them to perform like I "thought" they should. So, in the end, I simply set it as outlined above and left them there. My feeling is that until we can get more stations out here in the West, I would only be chasing my tail by making adjustments every time a new storm showed up on the horizon. I still go into interference mode occassionaly.
The past two weeks we have had several good days with lots of lightning activity in the area; however, very few of the strikes (visible from my home location) ever showed-up on the Blitzortung maps. Very frustrating, for sure...
Don't forget to look at the LightningMaps.org pages for your signals charts.
The signals will show you if you have ringing or other issues with your equipment. Compare yours to others and you will notice some stations are having lots of problems with noise and oscillations (ringing) in their circuits. Some also have large spikes and/or oscillations indicating external interference that is impacting their stations. Yours look pretty good except that the green channel isn't showing any signals. Play with the gains (starting with Cutty's recommended settings) and then watch your signals on the website. Deviations should be less than 2km. The lower they are, the better.
I forgot to add one thing about my settings. Whether it is my imagination, or not, I seem to get better results by just leaving things alone for a long period of time. It seems as though the servers adjust to your settings over time. That may not be true but things do seem to settle-down over time.