Surfin’: A Hamvention Diary

This week, Surfin’s contributing editor recounts last week’s excellent adventure at the Dayton Hamvention.

got good humidity

I have been monitoring my weather station closely since I got the outdoor humidity and temperature sensors back up and running on Friday afternoon and I noticed two things.

First, the bad news: I lose connectivity to the weather server for a few random hours each day. It may be something amiss with my APRS set-up or it may be network issues.

Now, the good news: I am not only getting outdoor humidity readings again, but now I am getting good outdoor humidity readings. The old humidity sensor always had very high readings, whereas the humidity readings from the new sensor compare favorably with the other nearby weather stations.

got humidity

The new cable for my weather station's outdoor humidity and temperature sensors arrived today. I swapped the old cable for the new cable and that solved the problem; my weather station has outdoor humidity and temperature readings again.

I examined the old cable, but could not see any problems with it. So I assume something internal to the cable or connector went bad.

where's the humidity?

The rain gauge seems to be working! There was some precipitation this morning and the gauge confirms it.

Next, I plan to tackle the problem with the outdoor temperature and humidity sensors, which I wrote about here. I ordered a new cable from Peet Bros. today and hope that is the cure.

weather station blues

The humidity readings at my weather station got weirder and weirder during the past few months, so when I was at the Dayton Hamvention last week, I talked to the folks at Peet Bros. and I took home a new humidity/temperature sensor board.

A few days after returning home from Ohio, I swapped the new pc board for the old one and things got weirder. Now, I was getting no outdoor temperature or humidity readings.

I assumed the new board was bad, so I swapped the old one for the new one, but the results were the same, i.e., no readings at all.

Replacing the board is not rocket science. Remove four screws to open the housing, disconnect the cable from the pc board, remove four screws that mount the pc board to the housing, then reverse the procedure with the new pc board. Not much can go wrong!

I e-mailed the folks at Peet Bros. and they suggested checking the cable and connections.

I already checked the connections, so next I will check the cable.

Maybe the cable was borderline after being exposed to the New England elements for six years and jostling the cable during the pc board install pushed it over the brink.