Weather

Blitzortung

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I’m a weather nerd. I like all things weather related. Around 10 years ago I ran across an interesting project to track lightning strikes around the world. Blitzortung.

Blitzortung is a community-based lighting detection network that uses Time of Arrival (TOA) and Time of Group Arrival methods to locate lightning strikes. It relies on a network of distributed, low-cost receiver stations, run and assembled by volunteers, to detect VLF radio waves emitted by lightning. By measuring the time it takes for these signals to arrive at different stations, the system can triangulate the strikes location.

I won’t go into great detail here on how it works, as you can find that information on the Blitzortung project pages. What I will show here is a little about my receiving station.

My station is a “System Red” PCB 10.4 detector. I purchased it as a kit and assembled it. I had to build my own antennas. You can find out a ton more information about the receiver and how it all works at the System Red link.

I chose to use Ferrite Rod antennas for my application. I wound the antenna on ferrite rods, shoved them inside a piece of 1/2″ PEX tubing, then wrapped them in copper tape with a 2mm slit to provide shielding. That all get put into a 3/4″ PVC pipe to weather proof the elements. There are two of these antennas, one is mounted vertically and one horizontally.

One of the ferrite antenna elements.
Antenna after insertion in PEX tubing and wrapping it with the copper shielding tape.
The completed antenna and the outdoor amplifier board.

I attached the completed antenna to my privacy fence in the backyard. Shielded CAT5 Ethernet cable connects the amplifier to the main controller. I also mounted the necessary GPS antenna outdoors.

Inside is the Main Controller, mounted to a wall in my basement.

The “System Red” controller.

It all works surprisingly well, though it does suffer from some interference. The spot on the fence seems to be one of the quieter spots. Mounting it on the side of the house was a lot worse interference wise.

This isn’t a simple build it and it will work setup. You have to be willing to tweak antennas and locations to find the “best” spot for the antennas.

System Red is long since discontinued, but is still supported by the network, and was replaced by System Blue, but I believe these are sold out.

Blitzortung is run completely by hobbyists, so their resources are a bit limited. In addition to making and selling the kits they also have to operate the servers that aggregate the data and calculate the lightning locations. They make the data freely available at www.lightningmaps.org. If you use their data please consider a donation to keep things running.

French Toast Alerts

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For several years I’ve been posting my “French Toast Alerts” on my Facebook timeline. But where did the idea come from?

Well, for starters, working at a grocery store in high school I noticed that any time snow was predicted, certain items seemed to become very fast sellers. Namely, bread, milk, and eggs. What the heck is going on? Are people planning to make French Toast if they get stuck at home??

Fast forward a couple decades and I ran across a Twitter account that was posting “French Toast Alerts”, so I asked if I could steal the idea, he referred me to the original source of these, Universal Hub in Boston. so I reached out to them to see if they minded. They said by all means, have fun with the idea. And so I have had fun with it.

And now when winter weather threatens Eastern Iowa I will often post this nonsense on my Facebook. Sometime I forget, or don’t even realize snow is coming, and stupidly enough someone will reach out to me to see if a French Toast Alert is warranted. So I guess I’ll keep posting them.

Weather

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I’ve always been a self described “Weather Geek”. In fact, weather spotting was one of the reasons I became interested in amateur radio as a teenager.

I’ve been a National Weather Service trained spotter since 1995.

I’ve been uploading data to Weather Underground since 2006. The first station was located on top of Independence Fire, and was a Peet Bros Ultimeter 2100. Sadly, it didn’t last long due to the computer it was connected to being destroyed by lightning. The a radio maintenance company claimed to have found the anemometer in pieces on the rooftop. It was fine a few days before that so I’m not sure what happened.

Later I obtained a Davis Instruments Vantage Pro 2 (wired version), which is now residing at the W0HC QTH. The anemometer is installed at 30′ on my tower, and the rain gauge and thermometer are at about 10′.

The data is captured via USB by a Raspberry Pi running WeeWx. From there it is uploaded to Weather Underground and APRS.