Rhonda update **pictures inside**

[Robb]

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 ... 75&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 X minutes Y 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 Tom Pipkin’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/getobex ... 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

[Robb]

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.

[Robb]

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.