KSStorm Blog

Fellow StormTrack member Jeff Smith is organizing a Mission of Compassion, coordinated with churches in the Lone Grove, OK area. It’s this Sunday, and according to this post on Jeff’s blog, these are the main needs.

• Large trash bags
• Work gloves
• Diapers
• Formula
• Large plastic totes with lids for storage
• Cleaning materials for damaged homes (brooms, paper towels, etc.)
• Water
  
• Canned food items

If you’d like to help out but can’t be there in person, I’d suggest sending Jeff some money through paypal. His email address is in his profile on the blog.

Update 9:24am – More information:
Checks can be mailed to
    Jeff Smith
    10336 E 2nd St
    Claremore OK 74019

Please make the check out to New Life Baptist Church with “Mission of Compassion” in the memo area. They have a fund for the Mission and it will also be tax deductible. Additionally, donations not used are stored in the fund until needed. There always is a next time, unfortunately.

You can also send PP to stormrider1970@gmail.com

Finally, the get-ready-for-season project is done. Been working most of the past two weeks to get it accomplished, and finally had everything in the van today and could take some photos.

Of course, the major expense, as it has been the past two years, was getting the van itself ready. This year it was:

• brakes on all 4 corners
• new alternator
• transmission flush
• cooling system flush
• oil change (usually do 2-3 a season)
• rotate tires (replace 1)
• wipers, a good vacuuming, and cleaning out the various trash nobody had bothered to take to the can.

I fought for a long time with the wireless networking between the two computers, and finally gave in — bought a router and wired it in to the Dimension 8400. The advantage that gives is more range — now when I leave the van running outside a place (say, the Subway on I-35 S of Blackwell, OK), I can tote the laptop inside and still communicate with the van just fine.

On to the photos!


The former “antenna farm” on top of the van has been condensed down…the cell phone booster (white antenna) has eliminated three mag-mount hard-wire antennas; the cell data card and EVDO service has eliminated the external antenna for Wi-Fi access…just don’t need the Wi-Fi anymore.

The other antennas are: black mag-mount for the scanner (center front, to the right of the garage eave in the photo) and the GPS puck (left side, just above the seam of the sliding door).

I like the idea that the vehicle won’t be so obvious…and although the installations are still such that I can move things from car to car if needed, the wires are tucked in behind trim panels and so forth, so they are in place for the season. It cuts setup time down from nearly 90 minutes to about 15-20, as well!



The Cyfre booster is tucked next to the rear bench seat on the floor. The interior puck is up front, under the passenger seat. The 12V power for the booster Y’s off the lighter plug that powers the smaller inverter, which is up by the middle bench seat. The tub is my vehicle-related stuff — brake fluid, jumper cables, antifreeze, etc.




The “gets everything” shot…starting from lower right…

• Dimension 8400 PC (under the trash bag, seat belted in place next to the bench seat)
  – handles GPS input, distributing it to other devices via GPSGate,
  – handles video encoding/streaming
• rear floor mat is hiding FireWire cable to the front, USB cable to the bluetooth dongle (which is under the driver’s seat), and USB cable to the hub next to the driver’s seat.
• by the driver’s seat: chargers & hub (more detail below)
• at 9:00, on the windshield mount: StormHawk — used mostly for situational awareness display of the driver
• at 10:00, cameras/tripod (more detail below)
• laptop & stand (now running with no wires except the charge cord)
• far windshield (beyond the camera), BlackBerry and scanner
  
• the tub on the bench seat contains map books, camera bags, extra tapes, binoculars, a high-power spotlight, lens and electronics cleaning wipes, and is where the scanner and some other items are stored when not on their mounts.
• the linksys wi-fi router is next to the tub, held down by the bungee cord that holds the tub in place (I was able to run that using the LATCH hooks where the car seat used to be)
• on the floor you see the white power squid — one of two in the vehicle. Both go to the smaller inverter, which is under the bench seat behind the PC. The other squid is under the driver’s seat. Both are used for the varous small electronics.

Detail of the bench seat. The PC is wrapped in the plastic bag for waterproofing, though that door shouldn’t be opened much in the active portion of a chase, if at all. You can see the network wire (blue) running to the router and the router power coming form the squid. That squid will also have the charger for our AA and AAA batteries, and it will be where any riders can hook up phone chargers, etc.



Front seat detail. Next to the seat on the floor, you see the quick-disconnect for the high-wattage inverter (which is under the seat). That inverter runs the PC and the laptop only.

To the left there are two Panasonic chargers — the back one is connected to the power cable to the camera, so that battery is there only for storage — the charger will not charge and power the camera at the same time. The front charger is the one being used to charge a battery. The batteries are used in the hand-held camera — the one on the tripod never leaves the van.

Further left is the USB hub. It’s there mostly to extend the USB cable to the StormHawk, but will also be used if needed to hook up the still camera or the hand-held camcorder to transfer video to the PC and upload. The FireWire cable to the camera is snaking through the middle of it all.



“Center Column” detail. Bottom to top:

The tripod is held in place by a bungie cord wrapped around the center housing. It’s positioned to clear both drink holders — first time ever that both have been clear in-season <grin>.

The Motorola cell phone clipped to the tripod is the one the PC uses to stream over. It’s connected via BlueTooth (to the dongle a couple of feet away under the driver’s seat). Alltel service, currently getting EVDO about 50% of the time.

The laptop stand is bolted to the floor next to the passenger seat. Right under the top knob, you’ll notice the bracket has been polished. That bracket is why I wanted to replace the stand — in the three years the stand has been in the van, the holes have gradually ovalled, meaning the laptop was dropping almost 6″ from where it should have been when the arm was extended. I disassembled the bracket and took it ot a machine shop, where they welded the holes shut and re-drilled them. So, the new laptop stand becomes a purchase for a future year — $40 to do the repair this year vs. the cost of the new Ram Mount…

The laptop is fairly new this year — went on the last couple of chases last year. It’s a Vostro 1500.

The camera on the tripod is new last year, a Panasonic PV-GS320.

The camera on the dash is 4 years old, a Panasonic PV-GS19. It’s the one that goes hand-held. (BTW: I’m shooting these photos with my still camera bought for chasing, a Sony DHC-H1.



From the other side: you can see the bungee cord a bit better. The yellow splash just under the tripod and near the laptop mount is the newest item, an inexpensive handheld anemometer. Don’t remember the brand name now, but I’m thinking I should have sprung for a Kestrel.



Closeup of the scanner and BlackBerry, which is in a charging mount. Actually, I split the mount off the horrible windshield suction cup it came with and attached it to one of the others I already have, that have much better cups.



All the stuff on the windshield, as seen from the bench seat.



Full view of everything up front.


The way it’s set up, breaking down in the evening at a hotel is easy. Put the cameras away, collapse the tripod, pack up the laptop, and stow the equipment on the windshield mounts. Takes about 5 minutes, and everything can fit in the tub and go into the hotel room, if I feel that’s necessary.

…and with that, back to normal activities…and SDS.

Click to see larger photos

If you’re in the Wichita area, you need to make time to see the annual spotter talks given by the local NWS office. Storm Fury on the Plains is consistently one of the most informative presentations of any type I see each year, and this year Chance (Hayes, WCM) and the guys have taken a different tack on the presentation. The focus is on “you-are-here” positioning decisions, with something like 25 or more slides devoted to radar + photo presentations of a variety of storm modes. For the experienced chaser or spotter, it’s a tremendous reminder and learning tool to improve our craft. For a schedule, click here.

I saw the presentation twice yesterday — in the afternoon at KWCH (took Roxan along for that), and in the evening at KFDI (took Pat along for that). BTW: Hi, Dick (Elder)!

Kudos, too, to a local vendor — USBFirewire (USBFirewire.com). They specialize in angled and custom USB, Firewire and other cables. I bought a short left-angle 4-pin to 6-pin Firewire cable last year to connect my video camera to the streaming PC, and never had an iota of problem with it. I turned to them again this year for a 15-foot version, since I’ve moved the tower from between the front seats to a position next to the second seat.

Should have everything in place today…I’ll get some photos of the van posted later.

It didn’t take a lot to convince myself not to bother with today, in spite of a slight risk area within a few hours’ drive. Mostly, it’s an equipment issue…the limited risk isn’t worth the hassle to go out incompletely-prepared. Still waiting for some items I’ve ordered to arrive — like the FireWire cable for the video cam.

Fast motions, very limited window because of the short days, one shot at anything because of the river…shall I list more reasons? The only positive I’m seeing is that it would give some additional experience with cold-core low setups. It’d be worth it if it were an hour and a half dive away, but not 3-4 hours away.

Okay, so this is one person’s anecdotal observation. But I am prone to believe the Verizon takeover is already impacting customers in our area.

I have an Alltel phone — Motorola E815, including data/tethering plan — supplied by the TV station. It’s capable of EVDO data, and I’ve had EVDO access at home better than 70% of the time the past year and a half (I live less than a quarter mile from a Verizon tower).

I also have an Alltel data card and an Alltel BlackBerry. These get EVDO Rev. A 100% of the time at home.

The phone switches to the “D” indication about 75% of the time now, and never keeps EVDO longer than a minute.

Last night I was testing the SWEET streaming service being put together by ChaserTV.com (supposed to launch in March). It confirmed my earlier observations:

• with the data card in, I was consistently pushing 640×480, 8fps video with no frame drops and about a 4-5 second round-trip delay. 89 to 145 kbps showed by both the encoder and the data card software.
  
• by doing nothing but shutting down the data card and lighting up the phone connection, my frame rate dropped to 5ps, the dropped frames rolled up to about 50%, and the delay lengthened to about 30 seconds. The encoder was struggling to push 50kbps.

Unfortunately, while in data mode, the phone does not give indication which mode (EVDO or 1X RTT) it’s in. You have to hang up, and most of the time it changes status within a second after the disconnect.

I firmly believe Verizon is “turning down” the phone, or not allowing it to run EVDO data, in an effort to push people onto data cards. Now, I have not had the phone on since last season, so I don’t know when it started, so this may all be in my head. But given my previous experience with Verizon, it’s the logcial conclusion.

Oh, the BlackBerry? Didn’t test it, but the EVDO indication on the front screen never wavered during the test on the other two devices.

Hefty wind rolling into the plains today, but it’s from the wrong direction. South and southwest is bringing dry air in. If today’s winds were transporting gulf moisture, I’d be juiced (as would the atmosphere) for Sunday. But now it looks like a fast-moving, middle-of-the night squall line moving in from the south early Monday morning. Never mind…I’ll be staying home as long as this holds.

Still not looking at Sunday with much detail at this point. But in this morning’s discussion and hazardous WX outlook, ICT is mentioning strong storms for Sunday late in the day, with winds around 50 and some small hail. As it would be a local chase, that might be enough to get the van out for the shakedown cruise. It’ll be Saturday before I pull the trigger on that, though.

SPC Day 4-8 outlook is showing chances for storms on Days 5 (Sunday) and 6 (Monday). Took a quick look at the GFS for Sunday afternoon and evening, and I think it may set up too far west…Dodge City or so. Want to get the shakedown cruise out of the way, but given my commitments at home and for my stations, a 2-hour drive one-way doesn’t excite. And my wife is working…

We’ll see how it shakes out. Long time away, still. Might lean more toward Monday, given positioning of things and the tendency of the GFS to be a few hours fast with things this far out.