Thanks for the replies, guys. I'm sitting here in a daze after reading page after page after page after page...I think you get where I'm coming from.
DanS, yes I'm blessed with some open area.
One thing I've picked up, though, is that the accuracy of the rain sensor is impaired when positioned high in the air and that wind sensors are impaired when placed low to the ground. Having an all-in-one sensor package wouldn't allow separation of the two sensors. Is this a really big deal? I want to get the best accuracy that I can but I also understand that sometimes you gotta pay the fiddler if ya want to dance. I had a really bad experience with a little $40 wireless Acu-Rite wx station...I literally went through 7 or 8 of these in a year!...segments in the displays kept going blank....my experience with Acu-Rite customer service was, ahem, less than 5-star.
Wallyworld's customer service was stellar, though!!!
AW MAN!!!....now I gotta clean all the coffee off my monitor!!! I just looked at the Weatherhawk
figuring it was a mid-priced station!!! Nice...very nice station but, uh,...ain't gonna happen.
Ok, so maybe all of this is pushing towards the Davis units...or the noble Weatherwise... ...now where's that rag...
hayskswx, thanks for the plug for the Vue. It is definitely one of the stations hovering toward the center of my radar. I'd like to have the UV sensor, but that's not an absolute necessity and isn't available anyhow unless if I go with a Davis VP2 or something even more upper end. How high up do you have your Vue installed? ...rain and wind speed accuracy? I understand about the "never ending story" part of this...seems hobbies tend to be like that, don't they? As I get older and the funds get less I tend to get more conservative, though (sometimes
). I posted an inquiry about the Davis units yesterday to archer but haven't heard back from them yet. I'm going to poke a couple of other places today. I see eBay has several vendors selling, too.
SlowModem, thanks for the CWOP Guide. I scanned over it but will dig in deeper later. I'm curious about the optimal height for the Vue. Would you want to favor a height for wind speed or rainfall? I've read that 33' is optimal for win and around 5' for rain and temperature measurements so would putting the Vue up at 10' (high for rain/temp and low for wind) affect the measurements greatly?...are we talking fractions of a measured unit or multiple whole units? I'm curious about this simply out of curiosity being as my measurements don't have to be razor sharp but at least in the ballpark.
I'm thinking I'd max out at around 15', probably. I'll look in to the CoCoRaHS thing.
Thanks again for the feedback, everybody. I'm still pondering over things...
Ed
I like the idea that Davis will refurb the units later on...that's a "plus" I didn't know about.