Red Wave Radio

The Dark Lord of the Sith

Doug Girling

Quote:>Whenever lightning strikes near my house, the television displays a
>little static. This got me to thinking, is there any specific freq.'s
>that lightning can be heard on a scanner. Is there any other natural
>phenomena that can be heard on a regular scanner, or do you need on of
>those *** thousand dollar setups? Thanks in advance.

Jeff KH6O
--
Air-Raid / Civil Defense Outdoor Warning Siren:
www.cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem=108545464

Quote:>If you're well-heeled, you can always buy a "Stormscope" -- a piece of
>aviation equipment that displays lightning strikes on a radar-like screen
>(a passive "weather radar" if you like).

Way back when...i used to use a oscilloscope tube and had one dipole
orientated east and west connected to the horizontal deflection plates,
and one orientated north and south connected to the vertical plates. With
a little experimentation i could tell from what direction the
storm/lightning was coming from. All ya need is a scope tube like a 3BP1
or so and the circuit to power it up and a couple of dipoles.
                        73 Art WB9HNJ

Actually a couple of three foot diameter 50-turn loop gap antennas with
a small vertical antenna to provide a blanking signal to eliminate the
directional ambiguity (i.e. is the received signal to the north or south
of the east-west loop) will work quite well. Direction can be read from
the CRT face and relative distance can be estimated by signal strength
[ sort of :) ]. There is a site however, http://www.boltek.com that has
a more elegant solution. His system will interface to your PC, record
and display realtime strikes.
    (Second author unknown)
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You could do the above with an old TV set. I invite someone with
more experience to fill in the details. You're dealing with lethal
voltages here.

Jeff KH6O