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A prototype marine weather station that automatically reports local weather data by radio has been developed by the National Bureau of Standards.
The unit is incorporated in a buoy that can be anchored in remote locations and left unattended for periods up to six months. At regular intervals throughout the day, the station broadcasts in code the air temperature, water temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed and direction.
Preliminary tests in Chesapeake Bay show that the station has a radio range in excess of 800 miles. The equipment was developed by P. D. Lowell, W. Hakkarinen, and L. M. Allison of the Bureau's electronic instrumentation laboratory for the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics.
At the present time the gathering of comprehensive weather data from many ocean areas outside of regular shipping lanes is haphazard and limited. Both military and civilian authorities would be better able to predict weather conditions if they received continuous weather reports from a much wider area. If a series of stations similar to the Bureau's prototype station were placed over wide areas of the Pacific Ocean, for example, they could give operations officers and meteorologists frequent reports making possible a complete weather picture for the entire ocean.
If moored in certain areas of the Caribbean, these stations might also give warning of hurricanes as they begin to form.
The automatic station translates information from each of five weather sensing elements into three-letter groups in continental code and transmits the coded signals on a pulse-modulated carrier frequency at about 6 megacycles.
These signals can be received on standard communications receivers and compared with a decoding table which gives numerical values for each of the meteorological variables measured. A single transmission takes three minutes. During this interval six items of information are broadcast.
The first transmission is a threeletter signal identifying the station.
Coded transmissions follow containing information on (1) air temperature between -2.5" and -110" F., (2) water temperature between 15" and 90" F., (3) barometric pressure between 950 and 1050 millibars, (4) wind speed from 0 to 68 knots, and (5) wind direction oriented from magnetic north.
The vessel which carries the weather-sensing and radio transmitting equipment was designed by the David Taylor Model Basin and is 20 ft. long and 10 ft. wide. It is constructed of aluminum and other non-magnetic alloys to avoid undesirable effects on the compass. The 6.54
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A self-contained automatic weather station, which transmits weather data by radio, has been developed by