Automated Weather reporting at Minor GA Airstrips

[no_one]

Kit Planes has an article about using a weather station in combination with a radio and some computing to broadcast weather reports at smaller airstrips that might not have a full official source, see below:

https://newsline.kitplanes.com/2018/...ip/#more-12494


This is allowed under the USA regs as it is considered an "Automated Unicom"
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/87.219

Has anyone been through the process of trying to get the same sort of thing approved for use in Australia? I see two hurdles:

1. CASR reg 120 which means that you need the authority of "The director of Meteorology" https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/87.219

2. Getting approval from Airservices and ACMA to transmit on a ctaf frequency. https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/aero...ces-guidelines

Is it as hard to get approved as it sounds?

[Nibbles2310]

Many just publish a simple website and upload the weather station data in realtime over 4G. You can often find the details in the notes of OzRunways, or on the website if it's listed in ERSA.

Works out a hell of a lot cheaper and far more convenient being able to see the data before takeoff.

PM me if you want specifics of a suitable setup

[Sunfish]

Give up. CASA will kill the idea stone dead by imposing massive costs and criminal penalties on anyone involved in implementation or maintenance.

[Squawk7700]

... or you could install a camera instead.

If you have WIFI onsite $40 total with no ongoing costs.

With no WIFI on-site, $209 for the first year and $100 for subsequent years for the data SIM.

Import into OZRunways... priceless! (Free)

Weather Cameras

Lots of "coming soon" on there, as they literally are. I sent out 8 cameras this weekend gone alone!

[First_Principal]

@Squawk7700 While I agree that a picture can paint a thousand words (and that you're doing a good job with your camera campaign) sometimes there are things that only words can tell you...

@no_one It's not clear if you'd like to do something along these lines for a private strip, or more widespread, but particularly in the first instance it would be a shame if you were prevented from improving your environment as a result of someone else's rules

I don't know much about Oz radio regs but here you could run a LPFM station on 88-108MHz, and/or there are various other frequencies available that you could transmit such a system on. Following on from this you could find your a/c radio may go down to 108, or you may have an FM radio in your a/c already.

And before someone points out that aviation radio uses AM, so it won't work, you might want to think about slope detection, or that the tx modulation method may not be specified for low-power stations...

FP.

[Squawk7700]

You'd need to decide straight up if you want to transmit via VHF, or if the Internet will meet your requirements.

That will determine the next steps. The technology is there, it's just the regulation side that will affect the solution and of course cost.

Personally I find AWIS on VHF useless. By the time you're within range you normally have a 95% idea on what the weather is doing anyway. You'll have the wind direction and strength from your avionics if you've got a half decent setup and even if you have the direction and strength from a station, it would be foolhardy to rely on it for a straight-in approach, so you'd be needing to check the windsock anyway.

What were they suggesting with this US system that sparked your interest, would you be flying along up high and want to tune into the frequencies to check the weather at local airfields?

[no_one]

Originally Posted by Squawk7700

What were they suggesting with this US system that sparked your interest, would you be flying along up high and want to tune into the frequencies to check the weather at local airfields?

When I flew a lot of GA in the USA I used to tune into the Automated weather for the airports along my route. I used this as a check against the forecast. Ie if the forecast for that point matched what was actually happening then there was a good chance that the forecast further along the route was also likely to be valid. If for example the wind direction was completely different then it was likely that the front hadn't passed that point and the rest of the forecast was also suss. The dew point spread also gave me an indication of the likely cloud base at that point. The range was ok when you were cruising along up high, at about 70 or so miles so you knew what was happening 45 minutes ahead in a 172 which was enough to help with the decision to land here or fly on. Have a look at a location in the middle of nowhere in the USA. eg Here There are a lot of locations with an AWOS and the frequencies are right there on the chart. You could work from one to the next getting accurate recent observations. The question I was pondering is could we get that level of information here for less cost using off the shelf technology?

I suspect that I agree with everyone that the best option is the website option but if it only cost an extra $2k-$3k and was easy then having it over the radio so anyone could use it would be nice too.

The issues with having a website and publishing weather results to that is that each airport has its own and there is no easy way of finding them when airborne, not all are listed in ERSA and certainly none are listed on the charts. It also doesn't get around the CASA approved weather source.

I have no immediate plans but am looking to move out of the city to the country to a property with an airstrip in the next little while with the intention of flying there regularly. I was curious if anyone had gone down the "official" path.

[Jetjr]

$2 or $3K wouldn't buy you the weather station let alone comms and then theres maintenance.
Theres plenty of regional places have an AWIS and can phone in, pretty good for planning longer VFR trips. Cloud and visibility is the key feature however also very expensive to add on to weather stn I believe.
IOS app "AWIS" finds nearby awis and phone numbers, dial straight from app

[YPJT]

We've been involved in the installation of a few of these both with BoM and later Visala. The approved systems are not cheap... think six figures.

I have also worked at airports that have installed mickey mouse off the shelf systems bought online. Ground staff generally don't know what they don't know and will blindly follow the readouts and pass that information onto aircraft . What astounded me was that the pilots would happily use this information. Sure 99% of the time the wind and temperature info might be ok but anemometers get stuck or don't give correct info. Plus there is generally no reporting mechanism installed to advise when part of the system is U/S like with the approved AWIBs.

The approved systems are not without fault either. I once had one reporting CAVOK when there was hi 90s % humidity and temp and dew point within a degree of each other.

[Dick Smith]

Casa will not even allow US style unicoms that can give unlimited wx and traffic info.

Clive Wilson at Lord Howe Island is an example.

[Squawk7700]

Coincidentally, I have a couple of 4K cameras headed for Lord Howe shortly

One of them overlooks the runway.

Dick, can you please PM me regarding this...?