Topic: CWOP Gladstonfamily indicates barometer is off on WS2902

[tdhart]

Galfert, as I am new to this and reading everything I can about it, do you suppose this will do the trick to get my station back active? Not really sure how the QC checking works...

CWOP Information for KN6KS (AV650) in Quartz Hill, CA, US

Thomas Hart
11:09 AM (10 minutes ago)
to cwop-support

As indicated on"Gladstonefamily.net":

Data is being seen at findu.com, but this site is not currently marked as active. To fix this, send email to CWOP-Support and ask her to activate your site.

After extensive research, I have settled upon 2470 ft AGL / 753m. This is what I have set as my barometer altitude on the configuration page on AmbientCWOP.com. My location is on an alluvial fan that has been terraced for construction of homes, so determining the actual (relatively) precise altitude has been a challenge. My Absolute barometer reading is consistent with this altitude and my offset for Relative Pressure has been set for this altitude and matches the local METAR (KWJF) 5 miles distant.

I'm not sure how the QC checking works, but if possible can we reset the errors on the Barometer so that my station becomes active again?

Additionally, I have read that there may a problem with QC on the Wind Vector part. Is this the case? I have checked, rechecked and checked once more, my sensors are aligned exactly with Magnetic north. Again, not knowing how the QC checking works, I suspect that last Sunday 6/14, when I corrected the misalignment of the sensors (Adjusted counter-clockwise a few degrees) this may have impacted the QC? Anyway, it is correctly aligned now.

[galfert]

Galfert, as I am new to this and reading everything I can about it, do you suppose this will do the trick to get my station back active? Not really sure how the QC checking works...

Send an email to cwop-support@noaa.gov and confirm your elevation and let them know you'd like to complete the registration process. Make sure you send elevation in meters not feet. If you have already done this and you are seeing messages about your station being inactive on Gladestonefamily.net then it isn't your fault. And I don't think that there is anything you can do on your side. This is occurring to just about everyone at this time. It seems that Gladstonefamily.net is the one with the issue, not your station.

I'm not sure how the QC checking works, but if possible can we reset the errors on the Barometer so that my station becomes active again?

No, you can't reset QC, it is an ongoing thing. After some time the default previous month will have good QC if the data is good for that last month. You can pull up reports for differing time lengths. Eventually if all is good it clears up just because the old data stops becoming relevant. Being active or not has nothing to do with QC.

Additionally, I have read that there may a problem with QC on the Wind Vector part. Is this the case?

Yes, on Gladstonefamily.net QC the wind is messed up. It doesn't affect other sensors. Just ignore the wind stuff.

[tdhart]

Thank you sir. I guess I should have been more clear, what I was posting was the email I was sending to the "cwop-support@" email address. The reason I posted it here was to get your take on it. Yes, I've been active for over a month now and recently (this week) became inactive, presumably due to QC errors on my barometer and on my Wind.

As per my previous comment, I calibrated my barometer per your excellent instructions here. This email to them was to ask to be re-activated.

Thanks for clearing that up, guess I'm not the only one...

Tom

[KD7GFL]

Thank you sir. I guess I should have been more clear, what I was posting was the email I was sending to the "cwop-support@" email address. The reason I posted it here was to get your take on it. Yes, I've been active for over a month now and recently (this week) became inactive, presumably due to QC errors on my barometer and on my Wind.

As per my previous comment, I calibrated my barometer per your excellent instructions here. This email to them was to ask to be re-activated.

Thanks for clearing that up, guess I'm not the only one...

Tom

A lot of us are getting the same error message you received about requesting to be activated.  There is another post about it.  It appears to be an "erroneous" error message. 

[tdhart]

Oh, thanks! Being new, I thought it was something I'd done, particularly since I remounted my sensors last weekend to get them higher above the roofline and had adjusted the north alignment. I do see that I show a normal color on the MADIS map, although when I clicked it from the gladstone site, it showed as black.

Anyway, thanks again to you both for the help!
Tom

[e91071f86d]

So after a power outage with the recent Derecho event, I had to redo this process of calibrating the WS-2902.

After scanning through this thread again re-learning how to perform the calibration steps all over again, I wrote a helper tool for future me, and anyone else who wants to use it.

The tool is hosted on my GitHub page at https://caboose700.github.io/ws-barometer-offset-calculator/. Feel free to let me know if I've messed anything up, or explained anything incorrectly, and I'll update it accordingly.

Thank you again to galfert for explaining the methodology and steps. His insight was a huge help in making this tool, and wouldn't have been made without it.

Edit: Updated link to point to refined tool, which generalizes the instructions as the prior version was specifically for the WS-2902 and the calculations are useful for other stations. Thanks again to galfert for pointers and insight on how other weather stations need to be adjusted.

[galfert]

Thanks!

That tool looks like an interesting idea. But it isn't ready and some things need to be fixed. We should take this offline and work on it. I'll be in touch with you via PM.

[galfert]

Chase,
Nice work on getting the finishing touches to your online calculator. I've performed some tests and I'm getting good results now.
https://caboose700.github.io/ws-barometer-offset-calculator/

For anyone that wants to understand how this works....
Step 1: The purpose of this step is to provide your elevation to your console. Since it doesn't understand Feet nor Meters, the elevation has to be given as the Relative Offset that corresponds to your elevation.

Step 2: The purpose of this step is to adjust your station's factory Absolute value so that given your elevation causes Relative pressure to match your local METAR.

Thanks,
George