VantagePro 2 Plus setup help w/ positioning gear

Well after a long time looking into what equipment I wanted to get for my home setup I finally narrowed it down to the Davis PRO2 Plus station. Now I am trying to figure out where to put the Wind Anometer and the Main ISS Base (temp, rain collection unit). I have plentry of options but just looking to get some pointers. I do live up on a hill but not sure where to put everything. Here are a few pictures of areas I am looking at.

From this view I am looking at mounting the Anometer at the highest peak of the home roof if I can get to this… is another question. I am not seeing a much about height of the Anometer though. This point is probably 40’+ above the ground.
http://www.getrusty.com/modules.php?set_albumName=deck&id=IMG_1231&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

Another area I am looking at is the top of the sun room roof as seen in this picture. Just not sure about the placement then of the temp and Rain ISS base.
http://www.getrusty.com/modules.php?set_albumName=deck&id=IMG_1233&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

I am not really keen on placing it in the middle of my yard. As for a few other locations I would possibly propose have some trees and pines and I am not sure if this would interfear with the wind.

This is kind of an open subject just trying to get some ideas what to do.

Regarding the Weather-Watch Site… I love it. Keep up the great work. It is very nice a informative.

Thanks and looking forward to becoming more involved with the community.

http://www.weatherstations.co.UK/gooddata.HTML

you need to remember that the anemometer cannot be more than 40 feet from your ISS as the cable just isn’t that long, so 40 feet above the ground is a factor to consider. Now having it above 40 feet above the roof is a bit much even for your conditions. Picture this. Tall mount to the roof, secured at the base and a big, long gust of wind comes by and the force at the top of the mast is a bit, think of what happens at the other end… not pretty… as the force will tear your mount and roof and the wife will have you on the roof with a repair kit in the dead of the night fixing the roof.

The rest of the unit you want in the sun, since you have the plus, you are measuring solar and UV and in the shade, unless you live always in the shade, isn’t going to work.

Mount the unit on the side of the the house as it looks taller than the other thingy and have the anemometer on the roof, but not at 40 feet. 10 feet is more than enough and I am assuming you have a fireplace and the chimney mount would be nice.

Have you got a wall you can bolt a mast to where you can get the anemometer clear of the peak of the roof by 8-10ft? Luckily I have a gable wall and my mast is bolted to that with the anemometer up in free air. If you have it too close to the roof you’ll get a lot of odd gusts/direction changes caused by turbulence of the wind over the roof. With a suitably strong mast (1.5 inch diameter thick-wall aluminium tubing) and mounting points (angle steel preferably clamping the mast in two locations a few feet apart) you shouldn’t have a problem with a mast that’s 15 feet long. There’s not that much wind loading on just a mast + anemometer.

Mind you with this, you’d probably want to mount it round the back of your very nice looking house!

You CAN mount it more than 40 feet away if you use the wireless anonometer transmitter. Just costs extra money. :?

Ahhh … wireless!! I did not know that this was possible for the anometer. That would be a good solution. Getting dumped on today with SNOW today so I think this is gonna be a bit til I can get on my roof.

Do you guys post photos of you installs anywhere here in the forums. I looked and say some but just trying to invision the best setup for what I have to work with.

Thanks guys for the info …

Is it a wireless or wired station?

Using a wireless kit for the anemometer can really give you a lot of flexibility. Mine is a good 70ft from the ISS unit which is on a post in the back yard. The post is a 2x4 and is 2ft in the ground with the ISS unit at about 6ft. The anemometer is on top of the roof clearing by about 10ft.

The ProVantage Plus2 will give you better reception than I get, though mine has settled down around 90%+ most of the time now.

Nice looking house… I must admit though, I would not want to get on top of that roof. I had enough just getting on top of my 1 story house.

That roof looks to have the same steep slope as mine - so with that design and with the preferred mounting point about 11 metres high is the reason I don’t want to go onto my roof either - I have to make do with reduced wind readings but would love to have the anemometer relatively clear of obstacles. C’est la vie!

I’ll take a picture of mine some time when we’re not being battered by >50mph winds. The roof in the picture looks to be almost flat in comparison to mine!

My next install will be low to the ground for ease of maintenance. Something like this…


productpic.jpg

That’s OK if you have empty land around you. If I mounted my anemometer 6ft of the ground in my back garden it would probably only be seeing 20mph gusts when it sees 50mph above the roof!

when I upgrade my weather station I will make sure all the instruments are sited properly.

I am not gonna struggle up on the roof and slippery tiles with a weather station anemometer that misses crucial gusts most of the time - especially last night :frowning:

A percentage increase offset in WD will have to do for now it seems to try and get closer to the local airfield.

But anyway I have not got a VP2 so not gonna hijack this thread any more - lol.

I sent Chris an IM about this - I though it would be nice to have a section on the forum where folks could post photos of their setups - might help some of us with seeing some different installations.

yo mean something like this for my setup?
http://home.mchsi.com/~dsmweather/stationinfo.htm

Very nice set of pages about your station aardvark!

I made a small page about my setup - going to re-do it with lots more information when I install a VP2.

http://sterlingrun.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=11&MMN_position=23:23

the scary part of web pages is that I am always trying to squeeze out some more data while trying not to clog up my available web space. Sort of like weather stations… always one more idea/more sensors…

…and then you think of another way of presenting the data but that would mean more pages, more graphics, more graphs and wouldn’t it be nice if your visitor could choose from a range of options and perhaps export to Excel…

Julian

My theory in making a weather page is this -
Keep the first or main page fairly simple - we have to realize that not everyone is like us in that we want tons of data and graphs. Keeping the front page simple won’t intimidate the normal person and make the basic information they are looking for easy to find and read. Then, have available plenty of links to the more in depth data and graphs for those who want to see it that way.
WD’s auto generated page follows this theory pretty well if you don’t put everything you can on the main page.