Topic: Inversion layers- and, made the paper again.

[SLOweather]

PG&E's local meteorologist John Lindsey talked about temperature inversions in his column Sunday in the Tribune.

While the main focus was on what they are and what they cause, he talked about using the balloon sounding out of Vandenberg AFB to see the altitude, and then mentioned how lower level ones could be estimated using temperatures from 4 different WeatherElement stations at differing elevations: mine at 310', Prefumo Crest at 1247', Tassajera Peak at 2775', and Condor Lookout at 3180'.

Here's the lead photo for the column. That's me atop the Tassajera Peak communications vault. And that pic has a bit of a tale behind it...

[SlowModem]

Wow!  You're really moving up in the world!   

[DGwx412]

I heard "and that pic has a bit of a tale behind it" but there was no tale to follow...I somehow feel a little empty.

Amazing pic.  That's pretty high.  I'm sure that I would have either freaked out, tossed cookies, or some combination there-of being that high on a tower (you said vault but I hear "vault" and I think underground).

[DanS]

With all those RF emitters around (assuming that they're all not rx only) do you have any interference issues with the wx station?

[SLOweather]

I heard "and that pic has a bit of a tale behind it" but there was no tale to follow...I somehow feel a little empty.

All ya gotta do is ask...

Tassajera Peak is in the Los Padres National Forest, NW of US 101 at the end of about 8 miles of "road".



The road was paved with asphalt, and used to connect to CA 41 until 40 years ago or so when the bridge washed out in a 100 year storm and wasn't replaced.

10 years ago or so, the road was still in pretty good shape, and I could make the trip fro 101 to the peak in 15-20 minutes. However, now, between the USFS lack of funds, and increasing use of the road by wireless construction crews with heavy trucks, the road has deteriorated alarmingly.

Early last Friday, John called me and wanted to go to Tassajera to take some pics for his column. I tried to dissuade him, but, in the end, I couldn't resist the road trip and press exposure.

Once we turned off 101, it took over an hour in my 4WD Avalanche to navigate the 8 miles of cobbles and too-big-to-be-called-merely-potholes. In a few places, John had to get out and direct me where to steer. Too bad we didn't get any pics of the road itself... And then, it took another hour to get back to 101.

The condition of the road isn't helped by the State and Verizon taking over the largest building on Tass (formerly owned by AT&T) for their operations. Every day there is a caravan of big trucks that heads there for construction.

But that's another story...

[SLOweather]

Amazing pic.  That's pretty high.  I'm sure that I would have either freaked out, tossed cookies, or some combination there-of being that high on a tower (you said vault but I hear "vault" and I think underground).

Heh. Vault is the generic radio trade term used for any building housing radio equipment/repeaters, etc. That one is a Seatrain container outfitted with power, A/C, generator etc. I'm maybe 8' up, on top of it, atop the 2,775' peak. John moved the ladder to another vault so he could get high enough to get a picture with the horizon in the background. Good thing I had the truck keys in my pocket.

 

[SLOweather]

With all those RF emitters around (assuming that they're all not rx only) do you have any interference issues with the wx station?

I installed a cabled VP2 Plus there, just for that reason. The ISS cable is protected by a Tripplite Ethernet surge arrestor. So, no problems there.

However, the wireless 900 MHz router link to my house 9 miles away, has 30-40% packet loss. The routers are direct sequence spread spectrum, so even with a bandpass filter in the antenna line, they get interfered with easily.

Even with that loss, since we built data buffering into the WeatherElement Data Hub, we still get almost 95% of the theoretical data uploads, at a once per minute rate.



That dropoff at the current time is an artifact of the updates/hour calculation routine...

[DGwx412]

Now that's a pretty interesting story!  Sounds like some amazing country to trek through.  The horizon view behind you is quite impressive.

[W3DRM]

Chris,

Have you ever thought about how much RF radiation you are getting when standing that close to all of those antennas????

[kray1000]

Chris,

Have you ever thought about how much RF radiation you are getting when standing that close to all of those antennas????

I wondered about that too.

I also wondered if that could cause hair loss.

[SLOweather]

Chris,

Have you ever thought about how much RF radiation you are getting when standing that close to all of those antennas????

That site's not so bad, plus most of the higher power RF is atop the masts, so I was in the null.

OTOH, I used to maintain a data repeater on another site with lots of TV and FM radio, among lots of other transmitters. Once, out of curiosity, I put my wattmeter and dummy load on the feedline to the 900 Mhz omin antenna.

There was 5 watts of RF coming DOWN the line from the antenna with no transmitter attached!