ELECTROSTATIC SUCCESS

It's Australia day today, and an improbably cool one at 22degC 
given that yesterday was over 30degC and it's forecast to get to 
37degC in a couple of days. A fine time to take a day off and try 
to build some proper foundations for my shipping container 
darkroom, but actually I'm here typing this nonsense instead for 
some reason.

Anyway the warm days have been nice for spending my days without 
any clothes on, and so far I've barely had to use air conditioning 
at all because the nights have been cold and the house has cooled 
down well. Also a couple of days ago there was finally some proper 
storm activity nearby so I _finally_ got to try out my cloud charge 
monitor. As I've already discovered during previous attempts to put 
it into action, it certainly can't detect all the lightening 
strikes that are within hearing range, but once the storm gets 
fairly close the meter does indeed swing around in sync with them, 
and you can sometimes see a bit of semi-random activity building up 
to a strike.

The design came from here:
http://techlib.com/files/cloud.pdf

EDIT: Some technical stuff that I forgot to mention, in case I've
actually inspired someone to build this. For filtering out 50Hz
mains instead of the 60Hz frequency used in the USA, C1 and C2 were
changed to 330pF, while C3 was changed to 660pF. I used parallel
combinations of low-leakage polystyrene capacitors to make up the
correct values: 560+100pF for 660pF, and 180+150pF for 330pF. Also
I used a CA3140 Op-Amp instead of the ICL7650. Total 12V current
consumption was measured at 5.5mA max.

My antenna construction ended up a little different, based on a 
small upturned metal bucket for the base, supporting a rusty metal 
hub cap upon a bamboo pole. One odd thing is that, in 
contradiction of the instructions, grounding the metal bucket 
"shield" around the circuit actually skews the reading completely 
off-scale, so I haven't done that. Otherwise it works quite well. 
The detector sits on the verandah and a big old 125mm-wide bakelite 
panel meter shows the reading inside, with the wires going through 
the window. I just have to remember to save it before the wind/rain 
gets too extreme and threatens to carry it off into the paddocks 
(don't doubt it, there's not much protection from the wind out 
here).

Mind you the lightening did get its revenge on me for peeking into 
its electrostatic secrets, my power also went off for about half an 
hour.

In other news, I got over to some of those water reservoirs around 
the Grampians. My full route around five indeed turned out to be 
too much, but I had fun wandering around three of them before it 
came time to turn back. Lots of people out swimming and boating in 
the warm weather, quite a contrast to the southern ones where the 
local water authorities strictly forbid doing pretty much anything 
except fishing. I wandered through a caravan park on the shoreline 
of one reservoir/lake as well, which is something I probably 
haven't done since childhood holidays with my mother and stepfather 
(which were scarcely happy, in spite of my mother's continuing 
insistance). Besides kangaroos and an echidna, I was surprised to 
come across a couple of deer wandering around the parkland. Who'd 
know how they got released, but apparantly their population has 
just recently become established in the national park, no doubt to 
the detriment of some vulnerable native species or other.

Also Aussies.space is apparantly going down shortly for 
re-invention by Fosslinux, so my gopher hole may be going to 
disappear for a little while at the end of the month.

 - The Free Thinker