We enjoyed our first real frost of the season last night. There was ice on the cars this morning.
Yesterday I helped provide radio communication for the Bike Virginia century ride. About 400 bicyclists were riding a 100-mile route all over the back-roads of the Shenandoah Valley, enjoying the wonderful fall foliage. We ham radio operators provide communications and mobile radio support along the route and between the base and the remote aid stations.
During the 10-hour event, I transported six bikers who "sagged out" and got too tired to make it back to the base. I also transported an injured teenager who lost control coming down a long hill too fast, and ended up with road rash. His knees were torn up pretty good, along with his elbows, the edges of his hands, and even his chin where he slid his face along the road before he came to a stop. I took him back to the base, where a medic treated him. I don't know if he ended up at the hospital, but we did have one accident which definitely put a rider in the hospital... I wasn't the ham who handled that one, however.
Today was even more interesting. I attended an all-day seminar at the National Weather Service's brand-spanking new weather forecast office in Sterling, Virginia. This facility is on 280 acres at the north end of Dulles Airport, about 20 miles west of Washington D.C. Part of the program was a grand tour of the new facility.
As you'd expect, all of the data-gathering, data analysis, and prediction modeling is done on computers. The system would make mathematician and computer science nerds drool.
Having spent quite a bit of time in the Jacksonville Weather-Watchers club, the youth amateur meteorological club for high-schoolers, back in the '60's and 70's, and having taken courses in Meteorology in college (as part of my pre-forestry curriculum, before I changed majors to business), I actually understood a lot of what they were talking about. But the analysis and modeling left me in the dust. These models would make calculus and advanced statistics seem like kids play.
The facility has an impressive array of communications capabilities, too.
Of course, my favorite was seeing the SkyWarn amateur radio station in the main weather measurement room. This is where all my ham-radio-relayed severe weather reports come in to when our local SkyWarn chapter is activated.
One of the technical sessions was on the radiosonde equipment. Here is an array of the various radiosondes they send up under the weather balloons.
We also got to watch the prep and release of a weather balloon with its instrument package, and then followed the trajectory with the microwave links. Instead of azimuth-distance ranging like they used back in my day, today the radiosondes are equipped with GPS receivers which transpond their location, including altitude, via radio. This serves as independent verification and dynamic recalibration of the barometric pressure sensor, adding an order of magnitude to the precision of the measurements.
The orange thing is a parachute. When the balloon gets somewhere above 100,000 feet, the expansion of the helium inside causes it to burst. The parachute allows the radiosonde to fall gently, so that in case it is found, it can be mailed back to the weather service, refurbished, and used again. Because they have GPS receivers in them, they cost about $300 each. About 25% of them are found and returned.
The site has some cool weather radar systems, including the latest differential multi-band doppler, phased-array experimental radar, dual-pulse orthogonal polarization systems, and composite reflectivity experimental equipment. Fascinating. Being a radio geek, I understand this stuff a whole lot better than I do the math modeling.
The site also has some really cool antenna arrays to pick up the the myriad satellite data being collected. For example, the IFlows system monitors the dozens of remote stream gauges and rain gauges in the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding mountains, and all that data is relayed via satellite.
Here's the VHF ham radio antenna.
And, of course, the HF ham radio antenna.
The Sterling facility also houses the national weather instrument research center which tests and calibrates weather instruments.
As a result, the 280-acre site is just loaded with all kinds of weather instruments, including some exotic new experimental stuff.
Click on the picture below, taken of the control room of the radiosonde research center. Notice at the top of the equipment console: they "have all their ducks in a row". Someone asked about them, and they said that those rubber duckies are like the observation center's weather rock. If the ducks are floating, then there's been a flood.
One of the research center's missions is the testing of new technologies. Here are several new experimental types of rain gauges, being readied for testing.
The research center has all kinds of special environmental chambers, where they can control temperature (up to 200-degrees Farenheit, down to 160-degrees below zero), atmospheric pressure (from almost total vacuum up to 600 times sea-level pressure), humidity, salinity (for the sea buoy weather instruments), solar radiation, and all kinds of other environmental characteristics. They are basically the "Consumer Reports" testing facility to test the radiosondes and buoy-based and land-based weather instruments and telemetry transmitters to make sure they'll hold up out in the weather, and stay calibrated and give accurate measurements under adverse conditions.
The spikes in the chamber below are radio-absorbant tiles to prevent radio echoes... the radiosondes use the microwave bands, which of course bounce off objects (that's the way radar works), so the test chamber is lined with the tiles to prevent the bouncing or escape of the radiowaves.
Here is their small wind-tunnel.
Below is the large wind-tunnel. The large wind tunnel uses propellers from a WWII fighter plane, ten feet in diameter. The noise is deafening when it's running.
The researcher turned it on, and turned it up, and the instrument inside the chamber was tested in winds of 145 miles per hour, which is near the top range of a Category 4 hurricane. Here is the actual readout of the wind-tunnel airspeed.
All in all, it was a very interesting experience.
As you'd expect, all of the data-gathering, data analysis, and prediction modeling is done on computers. The system would make mathematician and computer science nerds drool.
Having spent quite a bit of time in the Jacksonville Weather-Watchers club, the youth amateur meteorological club for high-schoolers, back in the '60's and 70's, and having taken courses in Meteorology in college (as part of my pre-forestry curriculum, before I changed majors to business), I actually understood a lot of what they were talking about. But the analysis and modeling left me in the dust. These models would make calculus and advanced statistics seem like kids play.
The facility has an impressive array of communications capabilities, too.
Of course, my favorite was seeing the SkyWarn amateur radio station in the main weather measurement room. This is where all my ham-radio-relayed severe weather reports come in to when our local SkyWarn chapter is activated.
One of the technical sessions was on the radiosonde equipment. Here is an array of the various radiosondes they send up under the weather balloons.
We also got to watch the prep and release of a weather balloon with its instrument package, and then followed the trajectory with the microwave links. Instead of azimuth-distance ranging like they used back in my day, today the radiosondes are equipped with GPS receivers which transpond their location, including altitude, via radio. This serves as independent verification and dynamic recalibration of the barometric pressure sensor, adding an order of magnitude to the precision of the measurements.
The orange thing is a parachute. When the balloon gets somewhere above 100,000 feet, the expansion of the helium inside causes it to burst. The parachute allows the radiosonde to fall gently, so that in case it is found, it can be mailed back to the weather service, refurbished, and used again. Because they have GPS receivers in them, they cost about $300 each. About 25% of them are found and returned.
The site has some cool weather radar systems, including the latest differential multi-band doppler, phased-array experimental radar, dual-pulse orthogonal polarization systems, and composite reflectivity experimental equipment. Fascinating. Being a radio geek, I understand this stuff a whole lot better than I do the math modeling.
The site also has some really cool antenna arrays to pick up the the myriad satellite data being collected. For example, the IFlows system monitors the dozens of remote stream gauges and rain gauges in the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding mountains, and all that data is relayed via satellite.
Here's the VHF ham radio antenna.
And, of course, the HF ham radio antenna.
The Sterling facility also houses the national weather instrument research center which tests and calibrates weather instruments.
As a result, the 280-acre site is just loaded with all kinds of weather instruments, including some exotic new experimental stuff.
Click on the picture below, taken of the control room of the radiosonde research center. Notice at the top of the equipment console: they "have all their ducks in a row". Someone asked about them, and they said that those rubber duckies are like the observation center's weather rock. If the ducks are floating, then there's been a flood.
One of the research center's missions is the testing of new technologies. Here are several new experimental types of rain gauges, being readied for testing.
The research center has all kinds of special environmental chambers, where they can control temperature (up to 200-degrees Farenheit, down to 160-degrees below zero), atmospheric pressure (from almost total vacuum up to 600 times sea-level pressure), humidity, salinity (for the sea buoy weather instruments), solar radiation, and all kinds of other environmental characteristics. They are basically the "Consumer Reports" testing facility to test the radiosondes and buoy-based and land-based weather instruments and telemetry transmitters to make sure they'll hold up out in the weather, and stay calibrated and give accurate measurements under adverse conditions.
The spikes in the chamber below are radio-absorbant tiles to prevent radio echoes... the radiosondes use the microwave bands, which of course bounce off objects (that's the way radar works), so the test chamber is lined with the tiles to prevent the bouncing or escape of the radiowaves.
Here is their small wind-tunnel.
Below is the large wind-tunnel. The large wind tunnel uses propellers from a WWII fighter plane, ten feet in diameter. The noise is deafening when it's running.
The researcher turned it on, and turned it up, and the instrument inside the chamber was tested in winds of 145 miles per hour, which is near the top range of a Category 4 hurricane. Here is the actual readout of the wind-tunnel airspeed.
All in all, it was a very interesting experience.
1 comment:
Wow! That is so interesting! No, really it is. You can even ask Jason, I love knowing about the weather news, and stuff like that.
Post a Comment