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Whenever it thundered I used to love to take out my shortwave radio, tune into some empty frequency and be able to hear each individual lightning strike in realtime (even more realtime than the speed of sound would allow!)

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You can look at lightning in an SDR receiver, they look like horizontally oriented stretched droplets. Somewhere around 7kHz iirc.

I tried to detect lightning with a Bosch Sensortec COTS magnetometer - but failed.

Was a fun experiment: https://www.dm5tt.de/2025/07/26/thunderstorm-detector-with-m...

I’d like to ask to repeat this experiment but with a ferrite core next to the sensor (touching it). On the low spectrum (below a few MHz?) the magnetic component in the electromagnetic wave becomes dominant. Which is why receivers in shortwave radio and in e.g. DCF77 use a ferrite antenna. The ferrite’s length should be perpendicular to the line formed by the sensor and the location of the storm.

Edit: you’re reading at 400 Hz so you’ll read phenomena below 200 Hz

Will do. The experiment isn't yet dismantled.

Going to write the ferrite core on my next shopping list.

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