Focal Point - 2012/06
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Modelers' weather station
Q548
Like many modelers, I have to drive nearly an hour to get to my local club flying field. With the current price of gasoline, this is really a big deal for me. Quite often I have made that one-hour drive only to find that it was too windy and I couldn't fly. In other words, it was a wasted trip and I wasted gasoline. Because I know you fly a lot, how do you cope with this kind of situation?
A548
I certainly can sympathize with this reader because, like him, I have at least a 40-minute drive to my flying field on the east end of Long Island. What I have used for many years, after I gained access to the Internet, is a free national weather-service website. The one in particular that I like is AccuWeather.com. I've listed the website in the "Sources" section at the end of this column.
AccuWeather provides forecasts for every city in the U.S. You enter the name of the city or the ZIP code and you have it. This service will give you the current day's weather, with a forecast for several days beyond that.
The best feature is that you get hourly information throughout the day. I can get a reading of a 4 mph wind on the website, make my 40-minute trip, and the wind is as stated when I arrive at the field. I've found it accurate, and best of all it is free!
While preparing this column, I received a reader's email that coincidentally related to weather forecasting at local flying fields. The reader's name is Bill Cessna (can you believe that?). Bill is a member of the SPARKS RC club in North St. Petersburg, Florida. Bill told me that his club, SPARKS, bought a professional weather station for slightly more than $100. This station takes continuous readings of weather-related data, including temperature, wind speed, wind direction, and climatic conditions such as rain and snow. Using special software, that information is placed on the club's website.
SPARKS club members can access the website from their PCs, laptops, and even from a smartphone or notebook and find out the current weather conditions at the flying field.
Bill passed on a load of data about this weather-station system. If you are interested, email me and I'll send you a copy. This will also give me an idea of what my readers like to see.
Zephyr Instruments produces the weather station, and I have included the... [rest of page is missing; text truncated]
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