Davis Instruments Weather Club
September 1999.

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Here's a quick preview of this month's contents:
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Wireless Repeater signals ahead... Tracking Floyd, Davis station owners team up with the National Hurricane Center... Outsmarting the birds and the bees, but what about the spiders? Enjoy!

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Davis: Wireless Repeater
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About a year ago, we introduced the Wireless Weather Stations. Many people were intrigued by the easy installation, but found that the range -- up to 400' -- was not quite far enough. Well, now we have an answer -- our new Wireless Repeater! The Repeater works with our Wireless station, receiving weather data from the sensors and resending it, increasing the transmission range up to 1500'. What's really cool is that multiple repeaters can be used with multiple sensor arrays leading to a network of wireless stations.

If you would like to learn more about the Repeater and our other new products, e-mail your name and address, and we'll send you our 1999 Catalog. Look for stories and photos of some of our weather club members sprinkled throughout!

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Cool Application: Tracking Floyd
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The news has been full of reports on Hurricane Floyd, predicting where it would come ashore, how far inland the effects would be felt, and what precautions people were taking to safeguard their property. Many reports mention the National Hurricane Center. Have you ever wondered where the National Hurricane Center gets all its data?

Well, a volunteer radio station called W4EHW (Watching 4 Early Hurricane Warnings) located at the National Hurricane Center in Miami provides some of the data. This group uses high tech equipment along with volunteer weather spotters to gather wind and location data during and after a hurricane. Spotters report the high wind speed, sustained wind speed and wind direction, along with their geographic location on a data form and send it off via e-mail or fax to W4EHW. The data is then passed on to the National Hurricane Center for storm assessment both during and after the Hurricane has passed. The NHC uses all the information it gets to learn everything it can about hurricanes, including how they behave, and how better to predict their paths.

How can you get involved? Check out the W4EHW website at http://www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw/ and join other Davis station owners who report data as volunteer spotters. W4EHW's site has lots of great information and you can access the Hurricane Weather Report Form http://www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw/WX-form1.html there too.

We'll bet there are many of you out there, like Michael W. Maier, who have great data to share. Michael Maier lives in Titusville Florida, which is just north of Cape Canaveral. He sent us some graphs of data recorded at his house as Hurricane Floyd passed by. Having anticipated a direct assault on his area, Michael's reaction to Floyd was, "As hurricane conditions go this was rather unremarkable (peak gust only 41 knots)."

Thanks for sharing your data Michael! If anyone else has a Hurricane Floyd story, we'd love to hear it. And we hope you will consider acting as a W4EHW spotter as do many other Davis weather station owners.

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Follow-up: Foiled fowl
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Last month we solved a Hitchcockian mystery: The birds did it! Pulled the filter screen from the temp/hum sensor, that is. We offered one solution, but asked if any of you had first hand experience solving the bird problem.

Harold Zeisset told us how he protects his whole radiation shield. In principal it should work for the temp/hum sensor too. Harold writes, "To keep bees, wasps and other critters out of the radiation shield, I cut a piece of nylon type window screen to fit the size of the opening of the shield. I then sewed Velcro to the screen which allows a tight fit and easy removal, if required."

Great idea Harold! However Dan Clanton of Grass Valley, California says birds aren't a problem for him - spiders are. He writes, "I read a lot about birds messing up rain gauges and weather sensors. Luckily, I don't have a problem with birds. My problem is spiders. In the summer time their webbing is constantly "gluing" my anemometer to the mast it's on. This prevents me from getting any wind readings. When the trees are moving but my Weather Station shows calm, I know it's time to clean the anemometer. Since my mast is over 20' high and on my roof, all I can do is squirt at them from the ground and then go in and erase the bogus reading from my computer. Perhaps I could use some of those birds other people have to eat my spiders."

Well Dan, we hope some of the birds will decide to relocate to Grass Valley and help you out. If anyone has a better solution, let us know.

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That's it for September's E-news! See you next month! To subscribe to this e-newsletter go to: http://www.davisnet.com/news/e_club_signup.asp