Background
Our flying field is on the other side of the Mt. Lofty ranges (some 70km away), weather conditions can be quite different to that in Adelaide. The club investigated the possibility of acquiring an anemometer with remote access to allow members to check prevailing weather conditions at the field before leaving home.
Our initial investigations into commercial anemometers with remote access found that it was going to cost a considerable amount, but by luck during a web search we turned up a simple and cheap Australian alternative.
Rotovane
The Rotorvane Anemometer is built from a simple kit of parts from the company, a number of other parts from the local hardware store and a old external PC modem. All it took was a drill press, soldering iron and some patience.
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Anemometer
O.R.A.M. has built and installed the anemometer at our flying field, another first in South Australia for our club, and maybe even Australia. The anemometer provides both wind speed and direction from just one moving part. Instantaneous and peak data in an analogue form is displayed within the club room on an LED display. This information is also available to club members at home who have access to a PC and modem.
The anemometer also allows members to accurately assess wind conditions to know whether they or their model can handle those conditions, you would not believe how often you check against the anemometer both before and after the flight. We'll never go back to the old piece of string or the bend in the wind sock.
Details
The anemometer was built as per the instructions on the Rotorvane web site. The head unit is mounted on top of a 4 meter pipe on the club house. Due to the high temperatures possible at our flying site during the height of summer (45 degrees in the shade - maybe well in excess of 55 in the sun), we have arranged shade for the head unit to protect the semiconductors contained within.
The base unit was also built as per the instructions.The modem we used was based on the Rockwell chipset and required some setup changes. The following commands needed to entered and saved using a terminal program.
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The modem setup in Settings pull down of the Anemometer software all needs to have the AT&F and AT&N2 removed to suit our modem. Add ATM0 in the Set speed box if you do not wish to hear the modems squealing at each other. |
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