(Note: This is only a starter page. As time and energy permit I will add to this page.)
This is a starter page for information about my Blitzortung lightning sensing station. This is a Blue Mini, aka a Blue Basic.
My station uses two 200-mm ferrite rod antennas from Ferrite Rod Antennas. The maker says that each of the antennas resonates at 130 kHz and has an inductance of about 15.2 mH. The first package to arrive from Europe was the ferrite rod antennas, shown at right.
The preamplifier is a 23.1 circuit board (schematic at right). You can see a top view and bottom view of the circuit board, as received, at right. As you can see, all of the surface-mount components were already attached.
The main board is a 22.2 circuit board. You can see a top view and bottom view of the circuit board, as received, at right. As you can see, all of the surface-mount components were already attached.
I also purchased a case for the main board. You can see its front panel and rear panel at right.
The station requires a GPS antenna. I used a Bingfu antenna (seen at right) costing $9.
It is station number 3205. It was first powered up on August 4, 2025 but was not really sending data to the system until August 6, 2025. You can see the system status here.
On August 9, 2025 I shielded both of the antennae with copper foil that was about 0.1 mm thick. You can see a trick I used for soldering the shielding foil — two slits to make it easier to tin the foil. You can see the antennas after I shielded them.
I am pleased to see that my station often turns up on the first page of stations listed here. This means that reports from my station seem to get used pretty often in locating lightning strikes.
Now we can return to the station statistics. The meaning of the statistics is:
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- valid/total compares the total number of strike reports that my station sent to the system with the number of my station’s strike reports that the system deemed “valid” (not noise)
- involved/valid compares the number of deemed-valid reports from my station that the system further chose to involve in the TOA triangulation process
- used/involved compares the number of involved reports from my station that the system further chose to “use” in the actual final TOA triangulation process
For any given strike, the system tends to “include” 20-90 reports. Then the system selects 12 reports from the “included” reports to be “used” for the final position determination.
In recent days:
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- the orange line for valid/total is generally 70-80%,
- the green line for involved/valid is generally 8-60%,
- the blue line for used/involved is generally 20-40%.
The orange, green and blue lines suggest that my station is not sending very many “noise” reports to the system. It suggests that the reports that my station sends to the system tend to be actual lightning events, and that the reports are often of good enough quality to get “used” in the final determination of the location of lightning strikes.