After reading "miraculon's thread
http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=18743.25, I decided to try my hand at a build. I'm posting this, not to take away from miraculon's informative post, but to revive the subject in the hopes that it may help to recruit a new user or users to increase the coverage of North America. Building the system was a lot of fun and the results, at least to me, have been astonishing. Once I tweaked the gain, I recorded a lightning strike over 2500 miles away. Further tweaking in the works
Construction of the boards took about 20 hours. My build is very much the same as miraculon's (why reinvent the wheel) with the exception of the gps (see attached images). I happened to have an old Sirius satellite antenna from one of my former boats and modified it to accept the gps receiver.
I cannot thank miraculon enough for his assistance with my build. The sharing of his knowledge helped me through my self-inflicted problems.
New lightning pages can seen at
harwichweather.com under Lightning Detection.
The controller is installed in a closet in my basement workshop. The GPS is located outside the walk-out basement on a west wall and connected to the controller with approximately 25' of CAT-5.
The antenna/amplifier is located in my second floor office, also on the west wall. It is connected to the controller with a 50' STP cable with shielded connectors.
My thanks again to miraculon.
Stan