Rhonda 3.0 season two

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

Part 4: Introducing the tree-mounted Rhonda 2.0

She's back, and better than ever! Rhonda 2.0 is smaller, lighter, sleeker than before, and designed to be mounted at the top of a tree. Rhonda's new box is specially designed to contain the weather station, radio, and deep cycle battery, as well as to be the mounting for the 20W solar panel. The box mounts into the "DR-1" mounting bracket: welded aluminum construction and able to support over 200 lbs. The DR-1 also provides for the anemometer mast with complete attitude adjustment and compression screws. The mast comes in 5-foot sections and can be as much as 20 feet tall. Click on a picture for a larger image. (Straps are removed for permanent mounting)

Installation of Rhonda 2.0 is easy as 1-2-3!

Step-1: Using the cinch strap, place the DR-1 bracket in the deisred location. The strap holds it in place while mounting bolts are fastened in the three holes in the top and bottom mounting flange. A saw can be used to flatten the side of the tree, and shims to ensure the bracket is mounted snug and secure.

Step-2: Carefully place Rhonda's box on the DR-1 mounting bracket (Rhonda prefers you to be careful when mounting her box), and secure with stainless steel screws in the pre-drilled holes.

Handles are provided to make it easier for DD and Brenden to handle at the top of a tree...






Step-3: Attach the mast holder with hardware provided. Be sure the mast is perfectly vertical to ensure the anemometer provides accurate wind direction. Mast sections can be added as necessary to clear nearby obstructions, up to 20 feet high. Tighten clamp screws to prevent mast from rotating.

Now, check all connections: solar power at fuse block, serial and audio connections to the Wxtrak, and connections at the VX-150. Check for transmission, then sit back, relax, and listen to Rhonda sing her siren song: "Come fly!"

Part 3 - Progress updates

Posted September 1, 2006

Many of you have been in touch; visiting, calling, even sending postcards, asking what happened to the up-to-the-minute weather reports from Rhonda on Oat mountain. I hope this lack of weather reporting hasn't caused anyone to carry an umbrella unecessaraly. I'm pleased to report that Rhonda has completed Beta testing with a perfect performance. 24/7 updates were recieved at the i-gate and displayed on the web every three minutes. The only hiccup came when she was sidewiped by a hit and run lawnmower, but that was fixed with a field modification to the power cable.

I've been talked into repackaging Rhonda to be better suited to mounting at the top of a tree, so I'll be working on that next. Meanwhile Rhonda is vacationing in my garage.



Posted June 11, 2006

I know many of you were alarmed and concerned that Rhonda stopped talking Wednesday evening. We checked her out yesterday and today and it seems that we got her talking again. The first issue was the antenna wire: I didn't have a strain relief inside the box, and it appears that something caught the wire and pulled it from the top of the radio. I had a second cable adapter, and swapped out Tom's radio for my flying radio and she worked for three whole transmissions before the battery died. Today we pulled the battery and charged it from the Suburban. One of the connectors was loose, and the solar panel was covered with bird droppings. Between the two, and the marine layer, I think that was the cause of the dead battery. Also in the box was swarm?, nest? covey? of earwigs, in everything. So the next two things I need to do is plug the holes to keep the bugs out, and build a nice, welcoming, landing strip for the birds.

Part 2 - The field test

Originally posted to the SCPA forum May 7, 2006

I wanted to give everyone an update on Rhonda, the Automatic Weather Reporting System destined for our local big-air site. Last fall I posted my intention to design and build a weather station that would report the conditions at launch with the goal of being able to know the conditions at launch in near real-time. Rhonda, sometimes bitch, sometimes sweetheart, is the result of that project.

She reports the weather every three minutes via the APRS system where she is known by her Citizens Weather Observation Program handle of CW4575: (http://eng.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs.html; http://www.findu.com/; http://www.tapr.org/aprs_information.html; http://www.wxqa.com/ ; for those wanting more information) The results are posted here: http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=CW4575&last=12 . There is also a link on the weather page under “Observations” If you scout around this page, ignoring the google ads, you can find the weather over the last 12 hrs, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 days. At the very top you will see the latest report and how old it is. Note that not all reports make it, so some times the top line ” Last report from CW4575 received 1 minutes 1 seconds ago” will read more than three minutes.

Rhonda uses a Peet Bros. U2100 weather station to collect weather data, a Byonics WXtrak to convert the serial output to audible tones, and Sparky’s smashed up VX-150 to transmit the tones to APRS repeaters as close as Chatsworth (at the Ladies Club) or as far away as Palm Springs! Eventually it gets to an Internet gateway where it is routed to http://www.findu.com/ and posted.

To keep Rhonda yakking, OJ offered up a 20-watt solar panel, which connects to a charge controller and then to a 36AH deep cycle marine battery. This powers the weather station, the WXtrak, and the VX-150.

For weather reports from the field (read: Rose Valley turn off, or Sand Pile) a Kenwood TH-D7 handheld radio will provide the same information. I have one and intend to have it in Topa Chase anytime we head out in that direction.

Three weeks ago, I got fed up with the B*tch in my back yard and enlisted Sparky’s help in relocating her to a beta site. I’d like to thank Mark Pratt and Ron Gruel (sp?) for letting me put her at the top of Oat Mt. in Fillmore. Once there, she immediately turned into a sweetheart... For the last three weeks she has been running automatically with no issues. Even with the marine layer of the last two weeks, power has not been an issue. She is located about 75 yards back from the edge of launch, so the wind speed is attenuated somewhat. Lesson for the final location.

At this point I think Rhonda is a viable solution to the problem I have of too many drive downs from launch. Now I need help with three things:
1. Location: my opinion is that any spot that can’t be seen from the front seat of a pickup truck is safe. Now that the road is open, I’d like to ask everyone to help find a spot that will give an indication of launch conditions with out being within line of site (and line of buckshot) of the road. Part two of this is help getting Rhonda to this location and installed. Her fat ass weighs about 50lbs, and she’s 22 feet tall, so this is not trivial.
2. Web site: The page at Find U and also here: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesonet/getobext.php?sid=C4575&table=1&banner=off is ok, but we should be able to customize a page to suit our needs. Someone here must be able to help with this (Hello New York, Darren, Casey, anyone?)
3. Cost: I’ve spent as much as a new (second) wing on this; not all is part of the final assembly, but would not have been spent if I wasn’t doing this project. At work this is called Non-recurring engineering costs. If anyone finds this of benefit to them, I’m happy to accept contributions (however, help with item 1 above is more important...)

Finally, I went and saw Rhonda today, but she got about two minutes of my time as Oat Mt. in Fillmore is SPECTACULAR! Camp Ronnie is awesome, with mowed launches and landing areas, greens keepers for Rhonda, the Coppertone tanning team, and cold beer on tap! Well, I didn’t actually get any beer, but I did get seven flights, and with all that space to layout, kite, launch and land, it was just what I needed to get over this no-fly spell.

I’d like to plan on moving Rhonda the first weekend after the Rat Race, so if you can help scout locations, please do.

Thanks,
Robb

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...