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Author Topic: Lightning storms nearby  (Read 512 times)

Weaver

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Lightning storms nearby
« on: June 25, 2020, 11:12:13 AM »

This morning a great number of lightning events approached from the south and now they are very close to me, most on the mainland but one or two on the extreme east side of Skye. I first got a warning that there were lightning strikes on Islay then coming up to Mull and the Small Isles and finally points even north of here.

Luckily we had both been with it sufficiently to keep an eye on the hardware lightning detector and the alert mapping apps we have running on iPads. Janet had gone shopping this morning so just to be on the safe side, she disconnected all DSL modems and the router did a fallback to 3G through my AA-supplied 3G USB ‘dongle’ NIC so no one even noticed the loss of all DSL links apart from the internet link being very roughly five times slower.

Thunder all around me now, in the distance - gentle rumbles.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2020, 11:36:59 AM by Weaver »
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burakkucat

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Re: Lightning storms nearby
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2020, 02:49:20 PM »

Gentle rumbles, all around, could be good . . . "clearing the air".  :)

Big simultaneous "flash-bangs" are ominous, modem and switch destroying, events.  :(
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:cat:  100% Linux and, previously, Unix. Co-founder of the ELRepo Project.

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Weaver

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Re: Lightning storms nearby
« Reply #2 on: June 25, 2020, 08:33:01 PM »

Second period with all lines disconnected again, lightning strikes in the mainland only 10.8 miles away and now on Skye 5.7 miles away. A real pest but I have to be very cautious given the nightmare experiences in February.

It’s a shame that the Firebrick router’s 3G USB NIC (’dongle’) is indeed only 3G and i can’t get 4G working without a whole load of nightmare compromises - NAT router-like behaviour inside the 4G USB ‘dongles’. I wish someone would come up with a device that is identical in terms if API but simply speaks LTE as well as 3G. Ho hum. The 3G NIC’s download is so slow - around 2 Mbps, and upload is horrific - something like 0.4 Mbps.

* 3G : 4.58 downstream / 1.05 upstream - 4G AA Three SIM in iPad -  tested using AA LibreSpeed web-based test in iPad Safari

* 3G : 4.53 downstream / 0.85 upstream - 4G AA Three SIM in iPad -  tested using Ookla speed tester iOS app in iPad

* 3G : 1.3 downstream / 0.24 upstream - 3G AA Three SIM using USB NIC into Firebrick router - tested using Ookla speed tester iOS app in iPad

The USB dongle 3G upstream is so slow that I can’t even get iOS Siri to work properly, so i switched to 4G iPad NIC as my coverage is good enough but the ipad can’t do LTE here in bed. I sometimes connect to Janet’s iPhone in situations like this as she has a 4G EE NIC and lots of free ‘data’

I’m using the stupid external antenna I got for the usb dongle NIC and I’m wondering if that actually makes things worse than having nothing but the dongle’s internal antenna. The only thing to do is a speed comparison test but that would all be costing me a lot of money on per-byte charging. I seem to remember speed test results sometime like 2.8 / 0.4 Mbps with no external antenna.

Lightning strikes around the Skye bridge now - lots of them.

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Weaver

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Re: Lightning storms nearby
« Reply #3 on: June 25, 2020, 10:05:45 PM »

Safely disconnected from DSL for hours now. We have been thinking about it and this is the longest period of continuous thunder rumbling we have ever heard here. Lightning strikes are now over the whole island and are surrounding us but luckily they never got closer than about 1 mile away, to the east of us. Slatted blinds were drawn in the bedroom and somehow we didn’t see that flash.

Ciarán the old greyhound is happy and content because he is downstairs on his sofa, not upstairs in the bedroom dog bed. This means that he feels safe in the downstairs part of the house, encompassed by 4-6 foot thick stone walls (truly) whereas upstairs he feels too close to the roof and is unsafe. He pants when he is upstairs if there’s thunder, brònán, poor lamb, but is fine now today.



Janet has been really poorly all day, with pain in various places especially around her left shoulder blade and she thinks it is her fibromyalgia playing up. she has had lots of pain killers which have done a good job. I feel helpless- nothing much I can do to help her feel better.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2020, 10:30:56 PM by Weaver »
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