Hi!
Egon shipped my "Red" kit 8 days ago, so I'm expecting it today or tomorrow.
I spent the week building and installing my antennas and getting the other odd bits together.
I purchased the STM32F4Discovery processor board from Mouser the day I ordered the Red kit from Egon. It arrived 3 days later, even with economy shipping! I have flashed the 2.0 firmware into the board, so it is ready to go.
I also needed to order a few GPS antennas with the SMA connector. I had one connected to my GPS Nixie clock, but found the cat had chewed through the cable! I'm glad I checked...... $5.00 ea from Ebay.
I opted to build the flat panel shielded loop antennas, described on the USTOA site at:
http://www.lrsatx.com/flat_panel_TOA_Antenna.htmPictures of my build are at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20280791@N0...655162504/I really like these antennas! They took only about 2 hours each to assemble. I have them mounted at right angles on an upper floor behind and at the side of a book case in the most electrically quiet place in the house. The panels are almost perfectly oriented N-S and E-W. The shielding works very well at rejecting 60 Hz hum and motor noise from the house and neighborhood.
I connected the panels to the microphone input of my laptop, cranked the gain to max, and monitored the panels using the "Natural Radio" setting of the free "Spectrum Lab" spectrum analyzer program. The program applies power line and bandpass filtering optimized for lightning detection. The program has an amplitude and spectrum screen open simultaneously. I am picking up high amplitude lightning strikes from Gulf of Mexico storms here in the Chicago area. The stronger strikes are clipping the ADC! I suspect I may need to back the gain of the amp down considerably. The lightning activity is continuous, with many strikes/second, peaking in the afternoons. I even heard a few tweaks and whistlers during the early morning hours.
I have the workbench prepped for the build when the kit arrives. I am slightly concerned about soldering the surface mount op-amps and GPS receiver. However, I bought a container of flux paste from Radio Shack, which should help. I've soldered many ham radio kits over the years, so shouldn't have much trouble.
It appears my station should be a good complement to the Michigan and Minnesota stations, especially for storms tracking through tornado alley.
I look forward to comparing notes with other US "Red" owners.
Regards,
Don