BeechTalk - BT

Username Protected · **Posted:** 24 Apr 2011, 21:53

Hey folks,

I've been reading almost every day with great interest, thought I'd jump on here to say hello. I don't have much to contribute here as I'm not a pilot but am around aviation a little bit and I'm very interested. :bow:

I'm an electronics tech for the National Weather Service, mostly work on NEXRAD and ASOS. What got me interested in Beechcraft was driving through parking at DTS a couple months ago on my way out to the ASOS - it was a Beech convention out there (I think there was 1 Mooney and 1 SR22 in the middle somewhere)! That, and there's a cool v-tail parked outside on the other side of the airport that stares back at me every time I walk outside the office at MOB.

At any rate, the sites I currently work on are MOB, BFM, PNS, CEW, GZH, and DTS. I'm a recent transplant from the Minneapolis area where I worked on AXN, RWF, STC, FCM, MIC, MSP, and STP... and a couple of years before that at Grand Forks (GFK, FAR, BDE and PKD).

If anyone has any technical questions about ASOS, NEXRAD, Weather Radio transmitters or other NWS systems I'd be more than happy to answer them

But I think that's about the limit of my utility on these forums :shrug:

Thanks for having me along and I'll be reading! :cheers:

Username Protected · **Posted:** 24 Apr 2011, 22:10

Username Protected wrote:

Hey folks,

I've been reading almost every day with great interest, thought I'd jump on here to say hello. I don't have much to contribute here as I'm not a pilot but am around aviation a little bit and I'm very interested. :bow:

I'm an electronics tech for the National Weather Service, mostly work on NEXRAD and ASOS. What got me interested in Beechcraft was driving through parking at DTS a couple months ago on my way out to the ASOS - it was a Beech convention out there (I think there was 1 Mooney and 1 SR22 in the middle somewhere)! That, and there's a cool v-tail parked outside on the other side of the airport that stares back at me every time I walk outside the office at MOB.

At any rate, the sites I currently work on are MOB, BFM, PNS, CEW, GZH, and DTS. I'm a recent transplant from the Minneapolis area where I worked on AXN, RWF, STC, FCM, MIC, MSP, and STP... and a couple of years before that at Grand Forks (GFK, FAR, BDE and PKD).

If anyone has any technical questions about ASOS, NEXRAD, Weather Radio transmitters or other NWS systems I'd be more than happy to answer them

But I think that's about the limit of my utility on these forums :shrug:

Thanks for having me along and I'll be reading! :cheers:

Two questions:

1) Are there any (NOAA) weather receivers that allow the user to select which types of alerts actually sound a warning? I'd like to eliminate being awakened at 3AM just because the NWS has cancelled a severe weather watch (cancellations in general ought not to activate an alert) and as long as I have all my cars indoors I'd just as soon not get an alert for anything less than a tornado warning.

2) Every see or hear of a RADID unit which was used by the NWS to display WSR57 radar images remotely?

Username Protected · **Posted:** 24 Apr 2011, 22:41

Quote:

1) Are there any (NOAA) weather receivers that allow the user to select which types of alerts actually sound a warning? I'd like to eliminate being awakened at 3AM just because the NWS has cancelled a severe weather watch (cancellations in general ought not to activate an alert) and as long as I have all my cars indoors I'd just as soon not get an alert for anything less than a tornado warning.

Hi Lance, if it's alerting on cancellations only, that's a problem, and since you're in Minneapolis I know just the guy to call

I wish I was still there, I miss it dearly. We lived in Waconia.

Typically, when you get alerted for watches that involve a cancellation, it will list the counties cancelled first, followed by the new counties included in the watch box. This happens most frequently with a squall line. For example, Wright and McLeodcounty might get dropped off, and the watch would pick up Hennepin and Ramsey. If you live, for example, in Carver county and the watch was continued for Carver, you would get an alert again as part of the new watch box.

I have a Midland WR100 at home, and I have the most experience with that unit. It does not have the functionality to control which tone alerts (SAME, specific area message encoding) get passed, only by county. While I can't endorse a specific product, I think the Midland WR300 can, although I have never put my hands on one.

Quote:

2) Every see or hear of a RADID unit which was used by the NWS to display WSR57 radar images remotely?

The 57 radar was a little before my time but I have heard many stories, generally about the maintenance of said unit

When I was cleaning house at the office in Chanhassen I found an old Magnetron sitting in the cabinet for that radar. Besides the RADID I heard there was a fixed 35mm camera sitting on a tripod of sorts above the old phosphor PPI-style sweep display that you could take pictures with every few minutes during, say, a severe weather event. lol.

My how times have changed.

Username Protected · **Posted:** 25 Apr 2011, 12:53

Username Protected wrote:

Quote:

1) Are there any (NOAA) weather receivers that allow the user to select which types of alerts actually sound a warning? I'd like to eliminate being awakened at 3AM just because the NWS has cancelled a severe weather watch (cancellations in general ought not to activate an alert) and as long as I have all my cars indoors I'd just as soon not get an alert for anything less than a tornado warning.

Hi Lance, if it's alerting on cancellations only, that's a problem, and since you're in Minneapolis I know just the guy to call

I wish I was still there, I miss it dearly. We lived in Waconia.

Then we were almost neighbors, I live in Victoria which you passed through on your way to the NWS in Chan. And FWIW, I worked for a few years in the same original terminal building at MSP that the NWS (and their WSR57) was located in.

Quote:

Typically, when you get alerted for watches that involve a cancellation, it will list the counties cancelled first, followed by the new counties included in the watch box. This happens most frequently with a squall line. For example, Wright and McLeodcounty might get dropped off, and the watch would pick up Hennepin and Ramsey. If you live, for example, in Carver county and the watch was continued for Carver, you would get an alert again as part of the new watch box.

I have a Midland WR100 at home, and I have the most experience with that unit. It does not have the functionality to control which tone alerts (SAME, specific area message encoding) get passed, only by county. While I can't endorse a specific product, I think the Midland WR300 can, although I have never put my hands on one.[/quote
My current SAME receiver was sold with a Radio Shack brand (hard to say what company actually made it) and it definitely has alerted several times just to let me know that the severe TRW watch for my area had expired. I'll look into the Midland WR300. I can always move the RS model to my hangar where I'm rarely sleeping.

Quote:

2) Every see or hear of a RADID unit which was used by the NWS to display WSR57 radar images remotely?

The 57 radar was a little before my time but I have heard many stories, generally about the maintenance of said unit

When I was cleaning house at the office in Chanhassen I found an old Magnetron sitting in the cabinet for that radar. Besides the RADID I heard there was a fixed 35mm camera sitting on a tripod of sorts above the old phosphor PPI-style sweep display that you could take pictures with every few minutes during, say, a severe weather event. lol.

My how times have changed.

I mentioned the RADID because I wanted to brag that I wrote the (successful) proposal for and designed that unit (with a little help from my team). It was my first and only experience with government contracts. The biggest eye opener for me was that I spent almost as much getting the four inch thick manual developed as I did on the hardware.

Username Protected · **Posted:** 25 Apr 2011, 16:56

Too cool! It's a small world. The 57 radar and all the associated equipment had a lot of longevity. I think they took the last one offline in '97-ish. The 88D will probably be around that long as well. Some is the same from the original - pedestal, antenna, most of the transmitter etc., but a lot has been improved and modernized over the years. The next big upgrade is dual polarization which is coming soon™, unless there are federal government funding issues again.

New reader, not a pilot