Part 1 - The plan

Originally posted to the SCPA site on or about November 3, 2005
(Note this is a reprint; some links may no longer be working)

Help me Rhonda – A remote weather station project

PLEASE NOTE: Explicit location names are not used for a reason. Local pilots will know where I’m referring to, and nobody else needs to. Also, this is a work in progress; not only don’t I have all the answers, I don’t know all the questions.

BACKGROUND:
A few years ago as a new P2, I was hanging out in SB and Ojai every weekend doing my best not to get hurt. Eventually the conditions were right to head out to the local “big air” site and I went out to see what it was all about. I made the decision that day the conditions were more than I was comfortable with, and drove down, something I became all too experienced at over the next two years. Now I launch with the rest of the crew, or we all drive down. Still, I’ve always wanted a way to know the conditions on launch before the 1.5 hour drive out of Ojai. Rhonda is going to help me with that.

PROJECT REQUIREMENTS:
Remote access to current and historical weather conditions on or near launch
Information widely available to the flying community
Operation w/o utility power or land line
Self-contained system requiring little or no effort on my part once in operation.

PROJECT “NICE TO HAVES”:
Ability to get updates from the field, i.e. sand pile or Rose valley turn off.

Rhonda will have a weather station, a solar power system, and a packet radio system, located so as to provide information that will allow me to understand launch conditions with out being there. Data will be broadcast from Rhonda to the digipeater on South Mountain and relayed from there to the Internet. There may also be a digipeater on the SB range that could also be reached.

PLAN:
Select and order a weather station Oct. 20
Install and operate at my house Nov 10
Connect to a pc and the internet Nov 30
Select and order radio and TNC Jan 15
Transmit weather data via APRS Feb 15
Select and order solar power system Mar 15
Assemble stand-alone system and run from home Apr 15
Relocate entire system to remote site. May 15

STATUS:
Items 1, 2, and 3 are complete. I chose a Peet bros. Ultimeter 2100 as seen here: Station I settled on this unit because of price and the two serial ports. These ports were built in, reducing the cost of ‘extras’ I would need to purchase if going with the other systems. Also, this is the same model used at the Torry Pines flight park and even though not the same application (above requirements) I figured I could hit up the designer of that system for help if necessary.
The system also provides the extra communication port to add a voice option as seen here: Windtalker I envision being able to drive to the Rose valley turn and clicking the radio for a report before continuing up the road.

So far, the biggest difficulty has been mounting the wind sensor to my house so that it was high enough to clear the peak while being located somewhere unobtrusive. This meant mounting a 20 foot pole on the side of the house under the eaves extending above the ridge line. This was done with one internet purchase, three trips to two HD’s, and one Saturday.

In the field, Rhonda would not benefit from having wireless sensors, and the U2100 came with 40’ cables. These currently run in a window, which could cause marital issues in the future. Suggestions for penetrating the exterior and interior walls would be appreciated.

The control unit was located on my desk and reading wind speed, direction, outside temp, inside temp, and barometric pressure right away. Twenty minutes later I had purchased Virtual Weather Station, seen here: Software I compared all the major products available, including the offering from Peet Bros., and settled on this as having all the features for 2/3 the price. So far it has worked fine, but the APRS tool is a bit hokey, kind of like freeware.

So, Rhonda is up and reporting the weather conditions at my house here: Robb's House Every minutes the weather station sends data via serial cable to the pc. Virtual Weather Station collects that data and creates the display (as seen on their web page). Every minute VWS writes a subset of that data to a text file and saves it on the pc. Then the APRS utility reads that text file each minute and sends the data to the FindU database, which creates the web page. I think this meets the first two requirements of the project.

On the weather page there is the current data at the top and how recently it was updated. Past the google ads you can see the trend charts, and below more ads the wind distributions. I think these will be great. If you follow the other links on the page you will see the location of my neighbors house, this is because of the APRS utility that came with VWS. I told you it was hokey.

For Item 4, I had originally planned to use a Kenwood TH-D7A(g) hand held 2M radio with the built in TNC. See here: TH-D7A This seemed then most elegant approach, minimizing the amount of equipment at the remote site and eliminating cables, adapters, soldering, etc. required of separate radios and TNC’s. However, the cost puts it beyond my wallet at this point ( the real reason I had it scheduled for Jan 15...) So for testing purposes at least, I’m going with the cables, adapters, soldering, etc. and today I ordered this: WXTrak I may regret the decision, but for $79 I got the whole functionality, and I since I can see South Mountain from my living room I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait until next year.

Stay tuned for step 5. Anyone with experience in packet radio and/or APRS who would like to help out please let me know. You might even convince me to get my ham license...