Early last year we had planned on installing Rhonda at the top of a tree behind the south launch. I had the tree mount stand from the last post built up and went scouting for a suitable location. When we got to launch it was a typical north day, 20-30 mph, and the trees were really moving around. Watching them sway, and realizing how far up we would have to climb, and how much work that would be every time we needed to do something, had us vetoing the whole tree mount idea. I'm really glad we did.
On the way home I was a bit depressed about going back to the drawing board, but as we stopped in Ojai, my friend said to leave Rhonda with him and he'd come up with a ground-based stand.
He got some steel pipe, and some steel plate, and welded up a stand so impenetrable we call it Rhonda's chastity belt.
Rhonda ran the 2007 season, until fire crews fighting the Zaca fire broke her antenna. That was easy enough to replace, and they did mark her off with orange tape when they buldozed the rest of the ridgeline, so no sweat.
This year Rhonda went back into action in May, requiring a whopping 20 minutes to install. She ran fine for 2 1/2 months when she just stopped transmitting. I went up and found the WXTRAK had failed. I ordered a replacement, and also let the vendor know what had happened. He sent the replacement, and sent a replacement controller for the original WXTRAK at no charge. I tried the replacement controller and it worked fine, so I reinstalled it and left the replacement in the case for the next emergency.
Weather reports can be viewed in real time here: http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=ki6cos-2&last=72
