Hello Jim W,

Great idea! While I can't directly help you out, I have made use of the
Davis Wireless Vantage Pro weather station for work. Nevertheless, it
appears that Yorkton Flying Services (in Saskatchewan) offers possibly
comparable weather stations for much less than the cost of the Davis
equipment:

http://www.gpsyorkton.com/weather_products.htm

Thanks for trying to make this happen.

Robert McMahon

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Myron
> Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 1:45 PM
> To: Manitoba_Windsurfing_Club@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Manitoba_Windsurfing_Club] Fwd: Weather Sites
>
> --- 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 ---
>
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