--- In WinnipegKiteboarders@yahoogroups.com, "Jim W" <ridehard@x>
wrote:
If anyone is interested in real time webbased weather sites in our
area, now is the time to organize this - NOT in the middle of the
summer!

Where? Probably best bet is soliciting people with cottages and
interested in sailing to donate the roof of their cottage as a
location for an anemometer on a mast.

What's in it for them? Not a whole lot. Well, if they are sailors,
boaters, or hobby weather folks, likely the best deal would be to
leave the basic display in their cottage.

How? The subscriber/user's would have to pay for the install of a
dedicated phone line to that person's cottage. The weather station
would have a basic modem attached, and a central computer would dial
that station on a pre-determined interval to download the readings,
which would them be uploaded to a webpage.

Locations? Whatever the most popular sites. Right now, VB is about
it for the east side of L Winnipeg. The Harbour Master at Gimli
agreed a couple of years back to allow his info to be used - not
sure
if that is still an open offer though. The Gimli airport is often
not very representative of the wxx on the water. Oak Point on L. MB,
NW of St. Laurent is ok, but that can be quite different than the
south end of L. MB, too. The Delta site was the U of M, I think ,and
that is not active, nor is Arness any more it seems.

As a rough estimate, I figured about 2 years back that the "one-of"
software, and basic station, modem, hardware for the initial site
would be about $1200-$1500. Subsequent sites would be less (scale,
etc). I've seen the Davis Weather Stations on Ebay, now, too. The
cost of the phone line would be an on going cost of the basic MTS
rate, long distance from the server computer to the remote modems.
The webspace (depending on bandwidth and setup of that) and some
basic electrical charge would be relatively insignificant, imo.

The site would need some maintenance, and calibration occasionally I
expect, aside from the initial effort to install.

Depending on subscribers, interest, cost, etc, there may be the
option to add pagers and/or text messaging wind alerts.

What's needed? The problem I had before is that everyone talks this
up as a great idea, but when you come to the point of asking how
much
money people are willing to commit to the idea there is a sudden
silence. This would not be free - that's just not a reasonable
expectation.

Is it worth the time, effort and cash outlay?

Jim
--- End forwarded message ---