National golfing events in South Africa
- Real-time lightning warning for players and spectators
- Installed on the course
- Unattended fully automatic warnings
Background:
Stellenbosch Golf Club celebrated its centenary in 2004. This magnificent golf course has hosted some of South Africa’s most prestigious golf tournaments, including the 1999 South African Open and 5 South African Masters tournaments. During 2019 they hosted more prestigious events and needed an easily installed and reliable thunderstorm detection system. The system had to offer advance warnings for overhead lightning as their location meant this was quite a common and dangerous event.
Requirement:
The system had to be quick and easily installed so that it could be set up just prior to the events’ commencement. The warnings had to be monitored by the course officials via a computer link so that audible warnings would be issued by the course officials.
Our Solution:
The BTD-200 was quickly and easily installed using a simple tri-pod mount. The optional direction finder gave them the ability to track the path of incoming lightning storms. Whilst the sensitivity of the sensor offered them advanced warning overhead (9km vicinity) for thunderstorm threats before any lightning was generated. Our computer user interface – Lightning Works – allowed the course officials to have real-time warnings of any immediate threats to the competitions’.
The events were a great success with no overhead lightning detected or reported. Only distant lighting was detected, and play continued safely.