Field Mill (Lightning early warning ?)

Brian might hate me by the time he gets back - 8)

Here are a couple of links to articles about an instrument called a Field Mill. Its used (if I have this right) for detecting electrical changes in the atmosphere and this then follows on to it being used as a lightning prediction unit. I picked these up off the 1-wire mailing list, I hope that the original posters do not mind me reposting them here.

The first by Matthew Smith

I'm working on a 1-Wire field mill; I'm basing it a well-known Scientific American article from the "Amateur Scientist" section. (Sadly now defunct,) See: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00000ED3-69CA-1C72-9EB7809EC588F2D7 I believe that field mills are used in Malaysian schools for early warning systems for lightning storms.

The second a follow up from Chris Nafis
http://www.precisionstrobe.com/jc/fieldmill/fieldmill.html

The electronics are quite complicated but it sure looks interesting, especially given the interest in lightning on the forum at present.

Boltek sells them too http://www.provantage.com/buy-7bolt00f-efm-100-atmospheric-electric-field-monitor-120v-150-ft-w-software-boltek-150ft-shopping.htm but DIY is definitely cheaper.

Has anyone here purchased one of these yet, or has anyone had any success with making one?

I am running a trial version of the software which hooks up to a data feed from Boltek, but the software is not web enabled, so data exporting may prove a problem.

This I think, would be very useful run in conjunction with the normal Boltek PCI.

I have played with electric field detection for this purpose, and may get around to an actual field mill one day but it’s quite a daunting project. The electronics aren’t bad, but I’m lacking a good mechanical workshop. Of course if Jeep was interested then we might have some possibilities.

Another field mill design I have seen that appears well thought out is this one http://www.meteo.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~skneifel/ (it’s in German)

Hello NiKo,
I was searching for A actual field Mill and fount the same sites you did , but the site in Germany is down, and I think that’s the same site as a have seen eurlier with the building instructions did you make a copy of that site, if so can you please send it to me ?

thanks in advance.
[email protected]

Hi, If you want something simple & cheap try  http://www.techlib.com/electronics/lightning.html   I have made three of these & work very well, one of then will pick lightning up to 20miles away. If you click on readers versions two of mine are on the page, Paul's MK1 & MK 2, I have more pictures if you want to them let me know. If you email the guy he is very helpful, I had trouble finding the chokes & he sent me all the bits to make two units for free from the states to England.

teal.

That one has moved, it’s now at Die Feldmühle von DH1STF, electric field mill from DH1STF also I have more field mill links bookmarked that are still live:

http://www.ee.nmt.edu/~langmuir/E100/E100.html
http://freespace.virgin.net/paul.z/Electronic/fieldmill1.htm#Fieldmill%20Voltmeter%20MK%202
http://freespace.virgin.net/paul.z/Electronic/ep2.htm
http://www.wildenstein.de/amateurfunk/as529/
http://www.hcrs.at/FELDMU.HTM
http://www.aatis.de/content/bausatz/AS529_Auswerteelektronik-f%25C3%25BCr-die-Feldm%25C3%25BChle

Hallo Niko,

You did A great job bij findig these URL’s

Thanks Nol

If you do build one please let me know. As I posted above it’s the mechanical engineering that’s my limitation :frowning: