{"id":15827,"date":"2011-01-28T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2011-01-28T11:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=15827"},"modified":"2015-05-30T14:52:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-31T00:52:02","slug":"atop-the-weather-mast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=15827","title":{"rendered":"Atop the Weather Mast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got lucky.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_166\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-166\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=166\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-166\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/CD73-16-11025-DC-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Weather Mast\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-166\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-166\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author working on the Keck weather mast<\/figcaption><\/figure>I had expected it to be a day of 20mph winds and freezing temperatures.  What I got was a balmy 11&deg;C (52&deg;F) and just a gentle breeze.  All for the good as I planned to spend several hours hanging off the weather mast installing wiring to improve the new dew point sensor.  A cold wind can quickly turn the roof of the observatory into a miserable place.<\/p>\n<p>The original sensor housing had <a href=\" https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=15823\">proved to be vulnerable to heavy icing<\/a>.  The new housing should be more resilient, as well as providing better daytime temperature readings.  This is due to changing to a different shelter design that uses a fan to move air through the housing past the sensor.  I also modified the housing with the addition of a heating element to allow de-icing.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_163\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-163\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=163\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-163\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/CD70-25-11012-DC-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Weather mast covered with several inches of ice\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-163\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-163\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Keck weather mast covered with several inches of ice<\/figcaption><\/figure>To make the heating element I needed heavy nichrome wire.  Not having any on hand I took a trip to the thrift shop.  There I bought a used toaster for a couple dollars and spent an hour dismantling the toaster to remove the heating elements.  I took the wire and wrapped it through the interior of the instrument housing, creating a heating element that should work quite nicely with a 12V supply, gently warming the housing and melting any ice.<\/p>\n<p>A beautiful day on the summit, nice to spend a few hours atop the roof, hanging in a safety harness from the weather mast.  I even remembered to put on some sunscreen to avoid frying in the high altitude sunlight.  A new cable pulled through the conduit, the instrument shelter replaced, a little further wiring inside and the job was done.  I will have to await another round of bad weather to see if the changes work, but given the trend this winter, I will not have to wait long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got lucky. I had expected it to be a day of 20mph winds and freezing temperatures. What I got was a balmy 11&deg;C (52&deg;F) and just a gentle breeze. All for the good as I planned to spend several hours hanging off the weather mast installing wiring to improve the new dew point sensor. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=15827\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Atop the Weather Mast&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[145,50,507],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15827"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15831,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15827\/revisions\/15831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}