Owner's manual

R E A L - T I M E L I G H T N I N G D E T E C T I O N
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Many users are under the impression that a very high antenna
placement is necessarily a better one. This however is not the
case.
A very high (> 10m or 30 ft.) antenna placement can cause
some unusual problems -- problems that were not anticipated
before the advent of Lightning/2000. A very high antenna
tends to be very sensitive to the low amplitude electrical
impulses produced by a storm. An unusually high number of
low amplitude strokes cause the range determination
algorithms in Lightning/2000 to produce somewhat less
accurate results. In effect, the averages are "thrown off".
You can partially compensate for an unusually high antenna
placement by adjusting the squelch (Options |
Hardware…). Adjusting the squelch will cause some low-
amplitude stokes to be discarded.
Most installations are well served by a moderate antenna
height -- 15-20 feet (5-7 m) is just fine. For those users
without metal roofs, an antenna placement in the attic is
sufficient to detect storms hundreds of miles away. Such a
placement has been observed to enable the detection of
storms over 600 miles away at night.
Even an installation in a ground-level room is often sufficient
to detect lightning hundreds of miles away. Position the
antenna so that it is facing north (a south facing wall is a
convenient place), and the top of the antenna is touching the
ceiling. Such an installation will probably not detect as many
strokes as a higher installation, but it will be fine for most
purposes.
Because some antenna installations are fixed and cannot be
moved easily, the decision was made to add the option of
range scaling. While range scaling was originally intended to
correct for unusually high antennas, users with more ordinary
antenna placements have successfully applied it.