Topic: New Lightning Detector at Narrabri

[David Brodrick]

Hi All,
A bit of shameless self promotion.. but this might be of interest to people in northern NSW.

We've just set up a Boltek LD-250 lightning detector in Narrabri on the north west slopes and plains, the output is on the web here:

http://narrabriweather.net/lightning.shtml

We've only had a few distant strikes since we set the unit up, so we're not really sure how well it works yet. It seems pretty flakey at long range based on first impressions, probably not surprising given it only uses a single detector.

Unfortunately there's some kind of local interference which shows up as false strikes near the NSW/QLD border.

Regards,
  Dave

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

The lightning detectors are quite cool. You should form a network with others. Perhaps then software can be used to triangulate strikes - that may reduce false strikes.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Michael Bath]

Thanks David - have added a link from the lightning links page:
http://australiansevereweather.com.au/links/ozlight.htm

The Strike Star system attempts to network the Boltek detectors, though not sure how effective it is.

[David Brodrick]

I did get in touch with one of the guys who runs strike star but he wasn't very keen to give me raw access to the corrected data from their network. I run Linux so his client isn't much good to me, however I might contact him again down the track and just offer to contribute my data anyway if we can agree on a suitable data format.

However a network of these things certainly would be very useful. Maybe down the track I'll be able to get hold of another one of these units, and try to find a suitable site 100-200km away. Actually it looks like there's one in Uralla, maybe I should get in touch with the guy who operates that one.

Regards,
  Dave