With the accuracy of the Blitzortung lightning network, my time and attention has been drawn away from the Boltek device I have. I just lent a backup board to an enthusiast who wished to see what it can do, and it tweaked my interest in the hardware again.
I was going to fire it up as soon as I get the computer that has the Boltek board in it cleared off (literally, there are all sorts of things piled on it and it has been resting for nearly two years.)
Assuming it will boot, and the innards will see lightning again, I am wondering about the two programs I had used. I understand Mark Mears who wrote Lightning 2 K has died, and obviously with the web site now unreachable, signals to me that no one took up the task of maintaining the program or sales. I had put some of the updates on the computer, but don't have the original files. He usually sent a unzip password with each update in an email, so what I have will be the last unless there is an archive somewhere.
One of the difficulties I had was continuing to try to tweak the program for accuracy. It was almost as if you needed to sit with it and monitor where the storms were on radar and tweak all quadrants for distance and sensitivity, etc, which I really don't remember having to do early on with my Boltek.
The other NexStorm is still being marketed, and again haven't updated it in recent times, so I'll see if my registration still allows the latest update to be installed once I find the login and password to their site.
My question is for those fixed site Boltek installations (not the ones in storm chaser vehicles) is there any interest in the lightning community with this technology and the software, and is there an active group of folks still enjoying having a stand alone lightning detection and plotting solution, or is this fading away as time goes on?
Since Lightning 2k's author and company is no longer around, are any Boltek users still running old versions of that, or has it been left behind?
Just curious. Sort of like getting the old Selectric typewriter out once in awhile and remembering things as they were, but if the Boltek hardware still fills a function, maybe I'll try to get mine back running this summer.
Thanks for opinions and thoughts.
Dale
