[aprssig] Weather Stations and Net Neutrality

[Richard Hoskin]

G'Day Bob,

> 
> > here in Australia we need to use positionless-weather
> > data as it is currently the only way we can get
> > weather information from the Government
> > Weather Authority out to APRS RF.
> 
> I don't understand.  No matter where you get WX data, there has
> to be a location where the weather data was taken.  The only
> question is whether that data is added to a LAT/LONG in every WX
> packet or only "associated" once an hour with a separate
> position report from that WX station.  Maybe you are referring
> to all the other weather products and information.  But still a
> hurricane report is useless without knowing where it is.  A
> tornado report is useless without konwing where it is.  A rain
> report is useless without identifing where the rain gage is..
> Etc.
> 
> > We don't have the same facilities available to us
> > here as you do in the US.
> 
> I don't understand how you can do anything with WX data without
> knowing where it was measured?

We get the wx data from the Authority and transmit it as
positionless-weather. Then the posit beacon is sent after the wx data from
the APRS station.

2008-08-16 09:15:04 UTC:
VK3VHF-6>APRS,WIDE2-2,qAR,VK3WRM:_08160800c248s011g...t048r001p012h63b10147X
BOM
 2008-08-16 09:25:04 UTC:
VK3VHF-6>APRS,WIDE2-2,qAR,VK3WRM:!3736.22S/14943.42E_Mallacoota

These are all fixed automatic wx services from the Authority. Cyclone
tracking is done with data from a different Authority and does include
position information. We rarely have tornados here and there is no system to
track them.

Here each states weather Authority has a different format to represent the
data. With 8 states that's 8 formats we have to contend with. We are trying
to work out a way to implement the US APRS NWS mapping and sever weather
warning but the formatting is the problem.

Cheers
Richard
VK3JFK