SIMONTON COVE WEATHER STATION SETUP

    I'm an amateur meteorologist who's been interested in the weather since I was about 10 years old. Way back then I had one of those kits you could buy at your local hobby store which would explain all the cloud formations and you could do dry and wet bulb measurements. All the information you collected could be written down in a  weather journal. After about a week it became all to tedious and I was beginning to think that photography was looking like my next serious hobby. By the time I got out of high school meteorology was still an interest but well situated in the back of my mind.   
    I went on to tech school and took courses in marine technology thinking that it might be interesting to become an oceanographer. I eventually did end up working on the ocean but not as an oceanographer but as a ferry boat pilot. Now this job brought weather back to the forefront. Any ways to make a long story short I eventually retired early due to an injury and went on to find new interests. My newest was the computer which I discovered to exist in 1995. Since then I've learned to build and troubleshoot and love anything that will interface with them. This brings me back to weather again.
    I've made some changes and have upgraded my station to a Vantage Pro. No complaints with the WMR968 setup. It has worked without a problem for over a year and would recommend it for anyone. I say upgrade because it's not only more expensive than the Oregon Scientific WMR968 but is more accurate and uses heavier duty materials including stainless steel and heavy duty plastic. The system uses an integrated sensor suite with the temp and humidity sensors in a fan aspirated solar shield with rain collector mounted on top. It does allow the anemometer to also be mounted as part of the suite or as in my setup on a mast. The anemometer has 40' of cable which plugs into the sensor suite. Sensor suite is mounted on my lower roof on an aluminum pole. The system is solar powered and information is wirelessly transmitted to the console located in the other end of the house in the "computer" room. 

MOUNTING

    In order to mount the weather system it was necessary to find a pole. Aluminum for me was the choice. It's inexpensive and won't rust. I was fortunate enough to have laying around a telescoping tree pruner, you know the kind you mount a shear on the top operated by a rope. This one I had bought at a yard sale to use to trim a couple of trees in the backyard, really. This was before the weather station. When I began to design the mast I found that this would be perfect. I removed the cutter and extended it to full length which was about ten feet leaving about a foot inside the larger pole and tightening it down with a hose clamp, very sturdy. Now attaching it to the house was another major problem. They do make mounting hardware that would work but it runs in the 65-100 dollar range. I figured I could do better. I purchased a couple of eight foot lengths of aluminum channel. This is shaped to fit over the edge of plywood to give it a nice looking protective edge surface. These are quit strong and easy to cut. I bought a bunch of lag bolts sized to fit nicely through the channel. I cut three lengths and attached each end to the eve. Down the center I set another piece of channel leveled to perpendicular and attached with a couple of stainless steel screws. This gave me a channel I could lay the mast against that was perfectly perpendicular. I then attached the mast with pipe clamps. One around the mast at each level of channel. This is very important, make sure to attach a copper ground wire. All I did was to attach the ground to the mounting frame. This makes it real easy to remove the mast as one complete unit. The ground wire probably wouldn't save your weather station but it might help to save the house.  The strongest wind so far has been 40mph with no problems. In a high wind the mast sways back and forth a little bit but I think if it were totally rigid it would probably be under more strain. The total cost  was about 25 dollars minus the aluminum pole. Keep your homeowners insurance up because I'm sure at some time there will be a gust that will take it down. Good Luck with your project and send me an e-mail if you believe this set-up is good or bad.

Peter Jensen