Mega-thunderstorm detected using meteor scatter setup

[IanL]

Here's one of the many meteors my radar meteor detector picked up last night at about 01:02 BST, 27th May 2018. The short orange streak to the left of the image shows the meteor's ionised trail reflecting radio waves from the Graves space radar located in Dijon in the south of France and detected using the Yagi antenna I built from stuff obtained at B&Q and the cheap SDR dongle.

It's not that exciting a meteor but  at the same time, we had that almost unprecedented set of thunderstorms over southern England. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44269304) Over 15,000 lightning strikes were seen in a four hour period. The series of vertical lines across the image show the broadband radio emissions from the lightning. Locally, they occurred continuously every two to four seconds over a period of 30 minutes around 1:00AM BST (each date/time at the bottom of the image is one second apart). The sky was literally flashing like a school disco throughout - I know because I was woken by the torrential downpour unlike my dear wife who slept through it all.

[IanL]

This was about 9 km / 6 miles from us:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-44270759

[wxsatuser]

Thunderstorms totally missed us but about 2mm of rain.

My ligthning detector was going pretty well but not the largest amount of strikes recorded here.

[IanL]

11 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

Thunderstorms totally missed us but about 2mm of rain.

My ligthning detector was going pretty well but not the largest amount of strikes recorded here.

Bearing in mind that the meteor scatter detector is not really optimised for lightning, it was quite noticeable that the detection only really picked up when the storm was pretty much overhead and dropped off quickly again. I think there was a lot of sheet lightning - certainly the thunder was pretty quiet compared to a normal storm regardless of the crazy frequency and number of flashes.

[wxsatuser]

I will check to see how much inter cloud there was.

Quite often there is a lot more inter cloud than cloud to ground.

[wxsatuser]

Yesterday until midnight my setup detected 10500 inter cloud, 5900 +IC and 4600 -IC

There were 6090 cloud to ground, 890 +CG and 5200 -CG.

[IanL]

Thanks. Nice to see that the data backs up rough impressions.

[Tomatobro]

There is a lot of interest from members of my astro club in meteor detection. I use a Funcube Dongle Pro Plus which is a bit pricey and tends to put people off. I tried a low cost dongle but got nowhere with it so I would be interested to know which dongle and software you use so I can pass on the information.

 

Just read your other post so my question is answered thanks

[IanL]

6 hours ago, Tomatobro said:

There is a lot of interest from members of my astro club in meteor detection. I use a Funcube Dongle Pro Plus which is a bit pricey and tends to put people off. I tried a low cost dongle but got nowhere with it so I would be interested to know which dongle and software you use so I can pass on the information.

 

Just read your other post so my question is answered thanks

I have built two detectors and helped someone else with one using the Nooelec NESDR. The results are variable - I get lots of detections with the first one I built but far fewer with the second. The latter used higher grade "Mil-spec" coax, ferrite chokes, is further from sources of noise, etc. but I lack the expertise and kit to tell if it is the single or antenna/cable that makes the difference. One is a few miles from a the other but both have clear line of sight.

[Tomatobro]

bThanks. One of the members has just brought a Noolec so it will be interesting to see what it picks up.

Out of interest I have attached a couple of screen shots, one of a meteor the other of the ISS. I use Airspy software, a 5 element loft mounted Yagi horizontal polarised and a Funcube dongle.

[Stub Mandrel]

There was a good talk on this subject at the Rosliston group a week or so ago.

I've ordered a £16 dongle of the 'bay as Funcube looked a bit pricey for something just to experiment with. When it arrives I'll knock up a Yagi and see if I can get it to run with my old Vista laptop.