Amateur Radio Weather Stations

“How’s the weather?” A question rarely far from an amateur’s mind. The sun can be a help or a hindrance to getting our signals sent around the world, rain has an effect on propagation (and outside field events!), high winds can be a menace to aerials, and your pricey rig could do without a bolt from a zap of lightning. As well as watching the weather, hams like to pass on the weather conditions “WX” to other hams around the world – as demonstrated in the classic Tony Hancock sketch… “It is ahh raining not”

With weather being such an important factor, it’s not surprising that so many amateurs are also amateur weather monitors – often with a home weather station capable of reporting temperature to a small receiver in the shack, fed from an external sensor. These are typically around £20 from the likes of Maplin and Amazon – Pictured here is Pete M0PSX’s weather station, the Heidi Wetterladen 24 – the young lady on the screen wears anything from a bathing costume to a raincoat, depending on current conditions

Something to try: Home Weather Station

These basic weather stations are great for giving you the external temperature, and a crude “will it rain soon” prediction, but many amateurs go to the next step – a proper external weather station – capable of recording wind direction & speed, rainfall, humidity, pressure and temperature. Many tend to opt for one of the Fine Offset range, rebadged as Watson or Maplin USB weather stations – hardly surprising when at the time of writing, these can be picked up for under £70. (See: Maplin USB Wireless Weather Forecaster).

Pictured here, these stations have an external array of sensors that transmit packets of data on 433MHz to an indoor unit, and offer far more data than on the basic stations. If you have a computer handy, you can also upload your data to the Internet and even the APRS network.

Pete M0PSX has one of these running, and the following banner shows current conditions in Leigh-on-Sea – the full set of data, plus forecast and graphs, can be found at www.southendweather.co.uk:

Weather over APRS

APRS is an amateur radio data mode that sends location information plus short chunks of text over-the-air – have a listen on 144.800MHz to hear packets of local APRS data whizzing around. You can also use APRS to report weather conditions, and the following map shows live weather data from home amateur radio weather stations in Essex:

If you’re interested in getting some weather data into your shack, onto the Internet, or uploaded to the APRS network, take a look at the new Essex Ham Weather Station page for more information.

Station in Essex?

Got a station in Essex? Let us know, so we can build a list. So far, we’ve seen 2E0CGW, MB7UUE, M0DXC, M0OAB, M0PSX, MB7UWM and 2E0BXC – Any more?