[wxqc] Frustrations

[Bryce Alexander]

I wouldn't recommend falling back to a cell phone in a hurricane area, the
local cell towers and their connection to the local phone carriers are just
as susceptible to outages as the regular phones and the power. APRS is the
only way to go during a true disaster.

Oh, and thanks from the heart for those of you who have shouldered the
additional cost to get the data out.

-----Original Message-----
From: wxqc-bounces at lists.gladstonefamily.net
[mailto:wxqc-bounces at lists.gladstonefamily.net] On Behalf Of Customer Care
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 8:21 PM
To: Discussion of weather data quality issues
Subject: Re: [wxqc] Frustrations

One item you might want to look into is a getting a cheap tracfone(or any
other cell phone) that has the ability to connect to a pc via an inexpensive
interface cable then create a script that pings your normal isp and if/when
it fails it can dialup via the tracfone to a backup dialup account that you
may have.  Being a ISP I use this method at home and if my home has a power
outage or bad weather takes down my data lines to my house, my computer
tells the cell phone to dialup and creates a dialup link that then emails my
pager and regular cell phone, then hangs up to help save minutes,  this
could also be done to upload weatherstation data as well.  Some of the new
cellphones even have internet capabilities for a few bux more a month.
Cheap insurance to keep the data flowing.

Just my thought of the day.

Dickie Bradford
Never-Enuff Technologies
961 9th Street
P.O.Box 426
Colver, Pennsylvania
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.never-enuff.net
email: support at never-enuff.net
Phone: 800-647-3145
Fax: 814-569-1934
--------------------------------------------------------------
(A)bort, (R)etry, (S)mack the @#$&*~ thing!
--------------------------------------------------------------


-----Original Message-----
From: wxqc-bounces at lists.gladstonefamily.net
[mailto:wxqc-bounces at lists.gladstonefamily.net]On Behalf Of Thomas Giella
KN4LF
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 9:32 PM
To: a WXQC e-List
Subject: Re: [wxqc] Frustrations


You guys aren't seeing the forest for the trees. Don and I both use Weather
Display software to put our weather data on the WWW via the APRS system to
the NWS from our Davis VP2 weather stations. However that setup would be a
useless during an emergency like a hurricane strike, as we found out during
the 2004 hurricane season when power failed and cable and telephone service
went out. Don and I had generators for local power backup but the cable and
phone company's didn't so our weather stations were dead in the water as far
as data transfer.

APRS was invented by a ham radio operator and Don (KI4EFL) and I (KN4LF) are
also ham radio operators and want to transmit our weather data to APRS via
our 2 meter transceivers. We both purchased the data logger/PC/radio
interfaces from Davis to do so but after spending allot of money for the
interfaces we found out that we needed a different interface that costs even
more $$$, to be able to interface our VP 2's with our 2 meter rigs.

We did research the situation and were led to believe that we had purchased
the correct interfaces only to find out otherwise. As an example Peet
Brothers weather stations have the data logger/PC/radio interface built in
with no accessory purchase necessary.

I spent in excess of $1000 for my VP 2 weather station and it's irritating
to see that Davis has no interest in making it clear in their literature and
on their website as to which interface is necessary for interfacing a
weather station to a 2 meter transceiver.

Take Care,
Thomas Giella, KN4LF
Retired Meteorologist
Lakeland, FL, USA
kn4lf at earthlink.net

Lakeland, Florida Daily Climatological Weather Data Archive:
http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf22.htm


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