Microwave birdhouse heater

I spent much of last week building and assembling the birdhouse/lightning detector antenna. Perhaps you've already read here that we discovered major problems with having the detector antenna in the rafters of the house. Everytime we used one of our light dimmers the detector went crazy and displayed what looked like a megastorm right here in the neighborhood. Unacceptable. By using a small AM radio tuned between stations, I found that the static from the dimmers stopped about 20 feet from the house.

But where could I mount the antenna? The bird feeder is far enough away, but it's too low. For best reception, the antenna needs to be at least 10 feet high. A tower? There are restrictions in our neighborhood (thank goodness) about towers and the like, so that was out of the question.

As bird enthusiasts our solution was perfect - a bird house! We went for a Purple Martin house mounted on a 12 foot high, 4x4 post. Why a Martin house? Well, we like the little fella's in the way they swoop around in the evening catching bugs. We've read that we're more likely to attract other species than Martins to the house, and that's OK.

Once the bird house was up with the post set in concrete, the next step was to dig a shallow, 40 foot trench for the cable run. I used 1 inch, gray PVC conduit in the trench, drilled a hole through the brick to my basement, and ran about 150 feet of CAT5e cable to my upstairs room where my weather computer is located.

The next step was to mount the antenna inside a waterproof housing which I constructed of 3 inch PVC with a top cap and bottom fitting. This assembly was connected via a 1 1/2 inch PVC elbow to a base fitting mounted to the post. For my fellow weather hobbyists, that base fitting, the one mounted on the post, was the hardest to locate. If your plumbing supply store doesn't carry it, check with a pool and spa store, they'll fix you right up!

Almost done - just terminate both ends of the cable with male RJ45 connectors, plug it in and . . . nothing. I've done quite a bit of intricate wiring in my life, but RJ45 connectors are a beast with which I have NO experience. I just couldn't seem to get those 8 little wires into those 8 little slots. I needed help. I hired help. Thanks to Scott Cason of Lagrange Communications. Scott had the knack and the know-how and he had me up and running in short order.

This was a very satisfying project. The birds get new digs. The neighborhood is spared an eyesore. (Heck, some might guess it's some kind of high-tech birdhouse heater.) Best of all, my lightning detector is performing much, much better in terms of sensitivity, accuracy and avoidance of RF interference.

Diggin' spring

I've had trouble with the house dimmer circuits messing up the lightning detector. Yesterday, I used a small AM radio to detect how far out the dimmers radiated. It turned out they didn't radiate past 20 feet or so into the yard.

I spent a large part of today outside in the spectacular cool spring weather digging a trench. This trench leads from the north corner of the house 30 feet or so into the yard. In this trench will be placed a one inch PVC conduit. I'll soon place a run of CAT5 cable in the conduit. One end of the cable will connect to my weather computer's lightning detector. The other end will connect to the lightning detector antenna. The antenna will be mounted on a 16 foot high, 4x4 post. At the top of the post will be a 12 compartment Purple Martin bird house.

Daylight saving time

The earlier change to DST was a big hassle for me and many others who run weather stations. I know, we had plenty of time to get ready for it, but it meant renting rare equipment to upgrade the firmware inside my station console. DST was here before I could get my hands on an updater. I hope to get it fixed before the change back to standard time in the fall.

As a result, I had a software crash in the middle of the night because of the clocks getting screwy. I know the purpose of this earlier change was to save energy and money, but I'm wondering if it didn't really end up costing more as so much equipment like mine, traffic control circuits, etc. had to be upgraded or replaced.

On the brightside, I'm going to enjoy the extra light in the evening!

Crash time

OK, the brand new weather computer crashed. I think I know why it happened. So, I should be able to prevent it in the future. You know how computers can be. Keep your fingers crossed.

This loss of two days on-line reminded me that we often lose power briefly during thunderstorms. However briefly the lights flicker, it's enough to shut down the computer, modem and routers. So, we're now on a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), more accurately described as an instantaneous battery back-up. It won't keep things going very long during an extended power outage, but should handle those "flickers" during storms and other brief outages.

Lightning detector

We've added a lightning detector. We hit a snag when we discovered that using dimmers in the house caused erroneous "hits". So, we're trying to remember not to turn on dimmers when the lightning detector is in use. The final solution to this problem will be to move the detector antenna outside to the weather station sensor post. That will mean burying a cable.

Otherwise, the display works great and can be very interesting. The unit is most accurate for storms within 300 miles, but it can sense lightning from much greater distances, too. Those distant hits might not be exactly where the storm is, but it gets pretty close.