Topic: buy or not to buy!

[josecmorales]

Hi.

I have a dilemma, i want to buy a blitzortung but i live surrounded by buildings, will this generate coverage problems?

[vreihen]

I don't see any stations in Venezuela on my maps, so I'd say some coverage is better than no coverage!

When I first set my station up, I had the E-field probe hanging over a doorway in an inside room of my house.  It was able to log strikes deep into Mexico as well as Baja California from 2,000+ kilometers away in New York State.  I suspect that you will get useable results despite the surrounding buildings.....

[josecmorales]

I don't see any stations in Venezuela on my maps, so I'd say some coverage is better than no coverage!

Take a BIG LIKE for you REPLY.

When I first set my station up, I had the E-field probe hanging over a doorway in an inside room of my house.  It was able to log strikes deep into Mexico as well as Baja California from 2,000+ kilometers away in New York State.  I suspect that you will get useable results despite the surrounding buildings.....

Thanks a lot for the comparison, I imagined that, because i saw a diffents detection from stations far away.

[vreihen]

Take a look at the coverage for South America:

https://www.blitzortung.org/en/station_list.php?stations_users=0&selected_numbers=*&region_country=>+South+America

Many of the stations covering South America are in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, etc.  Here's a strike that my station in New York State detected from south of the Amazon River last November:



I'm sure that any data whatsoever from Venezuela would be useful in South America, Central America, and even the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.....

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Your issue probably wouldn't be mainly physical or geographical structures, though that is obviously a factor... your issues are going to be the EM environment being extremely noisy... after all, we're trying to detect a specific noise' finger-print in a very noisy spectrum..,.,  3-300 kHz with 3-30kHz being about as narrow as we want to get... most of the sferic's energies will be between 8-18kHz..but the higher freqs are very important..

Do a walkaround test:  Take an AM portable radio.... tune it off station, start a low end, and do a slow walkaround... gradually sweeping through band off stations, ... if you have a lot of noise... then your area may not be 'clean' enough for long distance, but may be ok for shorter distance (using reduced gains/ higher triggers) to keep noise sources from overloading signals...
Generally, the E field probe won't be affected by magnetic noise, but will by 'arcing' or other 'electric' discharges, including lights, etc...  some junk isn't there all the time either... it's circumstantial, or sporadic, and changes with time of day, weather conditions, and season of the year... .
Generally, the H field antennas will be affected by both... and shielding them is not necessarily productive if the noise is 'near field'. 
...and you don't know what noise generators are in and around all those building... many 'killers' are not obvious.
...but if you hear lots of stuff other than 'white' noise on an AM radio, off channel, then you'll have an idea what you may face.
If you do decide to order, you might PM or email me first..  Mike

Oh... might take a quick look at this page: https://frankfortweather.us/fwxBLPublic/