[NCARC] August 19 NCARC meeting presentation: Citizen Weather Observer Presentation by Russ KB0TVJ

[Steve Henry]

*** Please forward ****

Hi folks--- interested in observing and reporting weather information and
learning more about weather / APRS?

This is a reminder about Russ Chadwick's presentation and our Northern
Colorado Amateur Radio Club (NCARC) meeting this coming Saturday.  Newcomers
/ guests always welcome!

Meeting time:  	Breakfast starts at 8:00 am
			Saturday August 19th
		   	Regular meeting at 9:00 am - 9:30 am
			Citizen Weather Observer Presentation:  9:30 am - 10:00 am +
Location:		Golden Corral restaurant
			901 E. Harmony Road (across from Sam's club)
			Fort Collins


For the August 2006 NCARC meeting, we are pleased to have a presentation by
Russ Chadwick KB0TVJ on the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP).    He
is the founder of CWOP, the only large, widespread weather station network
to provide quality-related feedback to citizen data contributors on a
regular basis.

>From the CWOP website (http://www.wxqa.com):

"Many citizen weather stations are producing weather data today. When these
data are used only by the weather station owners, data quality is not an
issue. With the communications revolution and the vast capabilities of the
internet, many people with weather stations are sending their data far and
wide for other people to use. In that case, data quality matters.

"The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a private-public partnership
with three main goals: 1) to collect weather data contributed by citizens;
2) to make these data available for weather services and homeland security;
and 3) to provide feedback to the data contributors so that they have the
tools to check and improve their data quality. In fact, the web address,
wxqa.com, stands for weather quality assurance. Tools that will help members
improve their data quality are listed under the "Data Quality" link above
left.

"There are over 4,500 registered CWOP members world wide and a graph of the
number of North American CWOP stations sending data over the past four days
is shown under the older name APRSWXNET (APRS description). The number of
world-wide citizen weather stations sending data through APRS-IS
(Internet-Service) is shown for the past 48 hours."

Russ lives in Boulder, and is a native of Cody, Wyoming.  He has degrees in
electrical engineering from Montana State, University of Wyoming, and
Purdue.  Russ is a member of ARRL and TAPR, and a SeniorMember, IEEE.  He
has judged at the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair for 33 years, was
awarded Department of Commerce Gold Medal for exceptional service in 1993,
and is the holder of 3 patents.

He has held engineering positions with Bureau of Reclamation, Institute for
Telecommunication Sciences, Wave Propagation Laboratory, and Forecast
Systems Laboratory.  Currently Chief Engineer, Global Systems Division of
NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO.

Among his other accomplishments, he developed the first clear air radar that
detected aircraft wing tip vortices.  He was the Chief Engineer and
principal designer of first operational network of clear-air radar wind
profilers.

This should be an excellent presentation.  Invite your friends and
neighbors.

Here is the CWOP page for K0UT:

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=K0UT


Bill Beach
K0UT
home:  (970) 224-1958
cellular:  (970) 481-2454