On Friday, September 14, 2012 9:29:31 AM UTC-4, Tony wrote:
On Friday, September 14, 2012 8:12:25 AM UTC-5, Anders Petersson wrote:

Hi I have developed a system "Windsond" to gather local wind data at different altitudes in an easy way. This is done by launching a 60 liter helium balloon with electronics that transmits back sensor data as it ascends. On the ground, a laptop receives the data and displays diagrams of wind speed, direction and temperature. The idea is not new, and weather balloons are indeed launched daily all over the world. The novel thing is the light weight and low cost, for a system adapted for altitudes up to 3000m. We use this for hot air balloons where we also recover the electronics again with a success rate around 80%. More information and pictures he http://kiwiembedded.com/windsond/ From discussing with a glider pilot, it seems this could be interesting for your sport as well. But you also want humidity readings, right? I'm interested in your comments and what potential you see. Looking forward to hear from you either here or on email . Thanks for your time, /Anders Petersson Embedded systems designer



Temp and dew point readings would be most important. what is the approximate cost for each unit? I could definitely see this being used during contests to get a local real life sounding instead of depending on computer model forecasts. If cheap enough it potentially could be used for every weekend club operations too.

I agree. A higher release altitude is needed -- minimum 2km for US East Coast
or Europe; as much as 6000m in the West where only airspace is the limit.
In the EDT time zone (UTC -4) the weather service data isn't available until
9am, which isn't long before the usual pilot meeting. Weather briefers
are stuck using model data based on measurements taken 10 hours earlier,
and checking at the last minute a measurement taken 100s of km away.
I don't know much about balloon parameters so I can't say exactly what this
will do to the sonde capabilities needed.

I could see this as being useful for wave camp, in which case a 7000m altitude
would be needed, plus a long slant range because the wind velocities would be
higher (100km/hr is typical for a wave day). However, that's an extreme case.
For wave flights we like to launch early in the day before convection starts,
so, again, we depend on stale measurements taken a long ways away.

-- Matt