Author Topic: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price  (Read 1476 times)

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Offline NHSA

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Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« on: May 24, 2021, 06:19:14 PM »
Hi,

I was reading about this and perhaps if price is reasonable for me ( I am retired with no income ) I would like to set up a station here in central Mexico. I have seen there are only two stations so far in Mexico.

I think building an antenna is not that complicated. I just built a few dedicated antennas, 4 element YAGI, for Radio Meteor Observation (@174.31 MHz) and I have one station running together with another one on a friends roof.

Thanks for any tips and comments

regards Rainer

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2021, 07:18:35 PM »
Right!  Antennas for 3-300KHz simple... 250-300mm long 8-10mm Dia ferrite, and a roll of 26AWG magnet wire... for H fields, and a 15-25cm 12-14AWG copper wire for E field.  or a handful of turns on about a meter wire loop fo H fields. Or can go exotic but no need. This isn't about distance, it's about quality data for locating.  See my station pages at https://frankfortweather.us/fwxBLPublic/index.html
Waiting List for kits is long, Mexico, Central and South America should be on the priority distribution list, ahead of denser areas like US, Europe... give it a shot. use the form  at https://www.blitzortung.org/en/cover_your_area.php
Mostly assembled kit shipped from Europe about 200-300 US dollars... don't know exact. You'll supply cables and power supply and antennas yourself.
 


Offline NHSA

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2021, 07:25:54 PM »
Hi,

Thanks. Sounds very interesting and the price also sounds good.

Just put my name on the list and my number is 6725   :grin:

Will see when they contact me.

Thanks Rainer

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2021, 08:51:10 PM »
pm me
 


Offline NHSA

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2021, 09:05:59 PM »
Hi,

One doubt. In the documentation it says wire with 1.5mm² cross section corresponding to a wire diameter of 1.38mm but I only get AWG wire in Mexico and the nearest ones are AWG 15 or AWG 16. I would ned AWG 15.5  :-)

Does this mean less turns = AWG 15 or more turns AWG 16 ?

Thanks Rainer

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #5 on: May 24, 2021, 09:51:55 PM »
Which channels?  I order my magnet wire for H fields from Amazon...15AWG is too large to mount into the probe block on the E preamp, without 'machining' down the end. E field is NOT an antenna assembly... it is a Probe, you might think of it as a capacitive probe. It is immune to magnetic fields, for our purposes.
I've been running experimental H antennas on two of my systems..
https://frankfortweather.us/blitzblitz/SplitCoil/Cuttys_Split-Coil_Build_Vshort.pdf
and the original RED runs 300mm x 7.5mm 26AWG modified ferrite builds on H
...there's a link at the end of that PDF to an "addenda" that may upset some folks...  :twisted:
 


Offline NHSA

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2021, 12:04:17 PM »
Which channels?  I order my magnet wire for H fields from Amazon...15AWG is too large to mount into the probe block on the E preamp, without 'machining' down the end. E field is NOT an antenna assembly... it is a Probe, you might think of it as a capacitive probe. It is immune to magnetic fields, for our purposes.
I've been running experimental H antennas on two of my systems..
https://frankfortweather.us/blitzblitz/SplitCoil/Cuttys_Split-Coil_Build_Vshort.pdf
and the original RED runs 300mm x 7.5mm 26AWG modified ferrite builds on H
...there's a link at the end of that PDF to an "addenda" that may upset some folks...  :twisted:

Hi,

I was reading the Blitzortung PDF and there they describe a double Loop antenna (two equal loops set 90° to each other) with 1 meter diagonal and they use 1.38mm diameter wire about 20 meters long.

I think I need to read more about this Blitzortung hardware and how it works ...   ](*,)

Rainer


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« Last Edit: May 25, 2021, 12:12:17 PM by NHSA »

Offline NHSA

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2021, 03:34:37 PM »
Hi,

It is mesmerizing to see the real time map working but even more interesting to see that some lightning is detected acroos half globe ... Is that real and why so ? Are these lightning so strong ?

There is a station on the island of Reunion at the moment registering lightning from USA   :shock: :shock: :shock:

Thanks Rainer
« Last Edit: May 25, 2021, 03:42:40 PM by NHSA »

Offline zoomx

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #8 on: May 26, 2021, 05:25:25 AM »
Maybe it's a false attribution, Reunion got another signal that is time compatible to an USA evento so it was assigned to it.
AFAIK the origin is computed from the time arrival to the stations. It mean that with a sigle station you cannot compute any origin and I believe that Reunion doesn't have any station nearby. But I didn't check on the map.

Offline vreihen

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #9 on: May 26, 2021, 07:39:04 AM »
If I recall correctly, there's a special arrangement for the station(s) on Reunion to be included in all of the Blitzortung regions because they are so isolated.

As for the distance, I log 10,000-13,000 km strikes here at USA/NY State (station 2603) from the South Pacific (Cook Islands area) several times per month.  I also log strikes every few days from northern Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, mainland Europe, south of the Amazon in South America, etc.  I'm sure that it is skywave propagation, which is not the most precise signal for a ToF system like Blitzortung.

It appears that the challenge at  super-long distance is in having enough other stations in your home Blitzortung region also detect the strike.  Some stations are registered in multiple regions, I assume as a legacy from when the grid had much less stations.  As much as I would like my station to be added to distant regions to see how it performs, I've heard that the processing power required at the Blitzortung mothership is generally not worth it to them for mostly skywave strike data hence never asking.

Remember, Blitzortung is a global science/hobby experiment, not a product that you can buy, turn on, and expect to work out of the box.  If you are not prepared to spend hundreds if not thousands of hours assembling the kit, hunting down local interference, and tweaking settings, I suggest looking at one of the commercial turnkey ToF products.....

WU Gold Stars for everyone! :lol:

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #10 on: May 26, 2021, 08:09:28 AM »
Vrehen, email Egon Directly... if your signals are that clean he might add you at least to Africa and Europe. As far as I know all NA, Central America,SA stations actually serve each other as Region 3.  A station CAN 'detect' a signal in any region, and score a 'detection'.  However, it won't be used for LOCATION, unless it's assigned to that specific region or regions also.  Generally these are stations with extremely low noise and little if no interference, and generally are closer to a 'second' region.  As you say, some of the multiple region stations could be considered 'legacy', but they're still of value. Your 'located' signals are only assigned within the actual region they occurred... in other words, a signal from Cook Islands good enough for Locating, WON'T show in 'America totals' for your station as 'used'.  It shows in 'Oceania' totals.

If all the servers are available, and if there's no network congestion, the computation process isn't the issue.  (even though many stations send a tremendous amout of junk signals - most are quickly filtered out of processing chain, and the final processing only uses up to 17 channels out of the thousands sent)  What's limited is memory for storage of all signals... the requirement is massive, humongous.  Which is why archival data is not kept long.

Here's how the energy propagates and is detected:


https://forum.blitzortung.org/showthread.php?tid=2749
« Last Edit: May 26, 2021, 08:30:59 AM by Cutty Sark Sailor »
 


Offline vreihen

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #11 on: May 26, 2021, 11:42:07 AM »
My station (2603) is almost always on the first page for most-used on the BT global stations list, and has been #1 on that list so many times that I stopped looking.

I've noticed that my used numbers at long distances has dropped over the last year or so, as station density goes up.  This is to be expected.

There's another station about 45 miles west of me (1933), that is also listed in the Europe and Asia regions.  That station and mine have similar results in North America, and I'd imagine that my station would have a slight advantage in being used for Europe/Africa since I'm 70 km closer to those continents.  This is why I have never asked to be added to those regions, although ironically station 1933 is errored out with interference as I write this.....
WU Gold Stars for everyone! :lol:

Offline NHSA

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Re: Where to buy Blitzortung complete kit and price
« Reply #12 on: May 26, 2021, 12:42:06 PM »
Hi,

Very interesting topic.

Does it play a role at what height you are above sea level ?

Well, I installed two Radio Meteor Observation stations here in my town of San Luis Potosi. My station is at 1950 meters over sea level and the other other one is in downtown at about 1870 meters over sea level.

While I get good echoes of meteors at beginning the downtown station did not get anything due to RFI. So we decided to put a band pass filter, which I did build, for the frequency in question and immediately he got echoes and now both stations are in good synchronization except the fact the downtown station get only 50% to 60% of echoes of what mine gets.

Below an image of the helical band pass filter I built.

Rainer


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