[TowerTalk] weather station on tower?

[Steve London]

An interesting discussion.

There is no doubt that the Davis weather stations are excellent and 
top-of-the-line. You also pay for that quality.

I live in a very lightning vulnerable location on a ridgetop in 
southwest NM. Over the years, I have had my share of lightning damage to 
tower-mounted weather stations. For that reason, I tend to go with lower 
cost weather stations, and accept that their life expectancy is highly 
random. Until very recently, I was using a LaCrosse, and just recently 
switched to an Acurite. No issues with RFI either to or from the unit. I 
have a common complaint with both - the advertised range from the remote 
unit to the base unit is grossly exaggerated. My experience is that if 
you can get 100 feet, line-of-site, no obstructions, you are doing well. 
(A friend described the range as "75 feet, or two solid walls, whichever 
comes first")

If you are curious about what frequency your weather station is 
transmitting on, or want to look at the signal strength, a 
SDR-receiver-on-a-USB-stick works great. For example, you can get the 
RTL-SDR receiver from multiple sources for under $15. With SDRSharp or 
HDSDR free software, using a waterfall display around 434 MHz, the blips 
from the weather station stand right out. (If you want to see an 
interesting, RF-related project see 
http://www.desert-home.com/2015/02/reading-acurite-5n1-sensor-set-this.html 
. No, this is not my web page, although this guy is amazing, and should 
be a ham !)

73,
Steve, N2IC