Get Val On The Getner

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Late... early... it's all relative... :D


GrLevel3 v2 is currently going for about $80 .... If you aren't a professional or enthusiast, it's probably a little much to spend unless you are in an area that is prone to frequent potentially dangerous storms. However I do recommend that people anywhere stay weather aware and having a good radar app on a mobile device ( aka smartphone ) that they can refer too in times that storms of any nature are in their area.
 

Tony

Staff member
FWIW, I will not be purchasing GRLevel3 when my trial runs out. IMO, I can get just as much info from RadarScope on my ipad and iphone and android phone and android tablet that I can get on L3. It's a great piece of software, I just don't "need" it.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Having the customization that GrLevel3 provides me is invaluable... Due to that I have about 45 friends and family located precisely on the radar map. I've been able to add down to the street level maps so I can tell exactly where things are happening. It's also nice to have the custom color tables and additional weather related info displayed directly on the radar screen so I don't have to have multiple web pages or apps running. Just using an app on a smartphone doesn't allow me the amount of detail I like having. Of course as I get older, having a larger screen to look at helps a lot as well...
 

murankar

Staff member
So last week south west Ohio, Dayton area. This would be north of Cincinnati. They got hit by an EF3 last week. We get tornados here just notebooks you guys. When we get one its a big deal. We are not quite repaired as y'all are.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
So last week south west Ohio, Dayton area. This would be north of Cincinnati. They got hit by an EF3 last week. We get tornados here just notebooks you guys. When we get one its a big deal. We are not quite repaired as y'all are.

The Dayton OH tornado was actually listed as an EF4. After hearing about it, I had to quickly check in on a few friends up that way. One lived a ways to the north another on the east side of OH and one just across the boarder in PA. They were all ok but still many others weren't. I do have each plotted on my radar but I don't hear about their storms in advance like I do here.
 

murankar

Staff member
For us in Ohio it might as well have been an EF5. They are all devastating to us. We don't have strict tornado safe building codes. So a trailer home will get ripped to shreds.

Dayton is close to Cincinnati and Indiana.
 

Tony

Staff member
Trailers here in Oklahoma is where those two people lost their lives. They are cheap, but they are not safe in a storm...
 

murankar

Staff member
I am sure trailers in Oklahoma can take a bigger storm than ones here in Ohio.


I agree trailers are not the safest thing to be in during a tornado. If it were me in would have a storm shelter that's accessible from the inside of the trailer if possible. I lived in a few myself.
 

Tony

Staff member
Don't bet the farm on that one. Really the only difference in trailers from where you are and down here is the insulating value. We may put hurricane straps around the house, but that is about it.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
I am sure trailers in Oklahoma can take a bigger storm than ones here in Ohio.

I'm with Tony... I really, really doubt it. Trailers suck in even straight line winds no matter where they are made and provide no protection at all from even some of the weakest tornadoes. ... IMO
 

murankar

Staff member
I was under a misconception then. I was lead to believe trailers in hurricane and tornado areas were built stronger. Either way I want an under ground bunker with food and water stores. Something I can call home in case stuff happens.
 

Rob Lancaster

Active Member
Oh yeah! I'll take the underground bunker when the s#@%t hits the fan... To bad we ain't got one here; DOE!

Got the GRLevel3 website in the favorites list for now for safe keeping. I defiantly want to update my software but you know how it goes, money, money, money....

Ok; question of the day...
Here on Oahu I use the Molokai radar for my main radar site. Kauai is my back up. It's not as good.
How come when I see a storm move over the radar site I can still see it? Isn't there a cone of silence? A big cone of silence...

This baffles me. After working on 27 MHz (CB) Omni/ beam antennas and then we worked our way up to 107.3 MHz.. We know about the cone of silence or null that's over or under an antenna.What's there you say? What were we doing at 107.3 Nothing until we built and operated a nice li'll FM stereo broadcast station. Known as the KHKU project; Kaneohe's first and only (at the time) FM stereo broadcast station. Hey a quality FM signal is hard to get around all these mountains. Even a class C broadcast station with an ERP of 100,000 watt's are blocked by the Koolau Maintains. So we just took the liberty and remedied that situation for our area. Besides we always wanted to know how's it done; know what I mean. They always said that necessity is the mother of invention, he he heee....

What was our ERP you ask?
Are you ready for this?
It was only a fraction of the power of the big guys at 36 watts ERP. We got 5 to 10 miles and we only compressed our audio to a 2:1 ratio. Most commercial stations compress up to 5, 6, 7 or so :1... This destroys the dynamic range and stereo separation. They do it to make the audio louder instead of sounding like it's coming out of the bushes.. If you have a good clean and clear signal, you do not want a lot of audio compression.

Did I mention that we had 45 dB stereo separation.. The average receiver of the day had 35 or less dB of separation so with our low audio compression, killer high stereo separation and of course if your in the cardioid radiation pattern of our polar plot, you had clear, quiet in the back ground, majorly separated FM stereo signal that can rival that of the CD and it's coming from miles away. YEAH BABEE!! We were rock'n!!! The antenna for the KHKU Project was a vertically polarized dual bay stacked phase array. I really wish I took pictures of it but I never did, damn! The swr was measured on a Bird meter. It was 1.2: 1...…. The swr was checked at the two phasing line feeds and at the rf amps output. No matter were we put the Bird meter in the transmission line, the line showed 1.2:1. No faked out readings... That totally explains why we had good range with such low power. It's all in the antenna folks! LOL!!!

After that little stunt, we moved up again to the UHF band. You see at the time cell phones were very expensive. My brother was working security. Sometimes he was 3 miles away and sometimes he was about 9 miles away. For the most part he had to get to a phone or sometimes use a hand held radio that worked like crap to contact whoever.

We took that opportunity to improve communications (in the short range of about 10 miles) without the big cell bill of the time. Remember we got those pesky three thousand foot mountains and all the suck out of the valleys in between. It's hell on radio, especially if the frequency is high.

This calls for a coaxial colinear phased array.
I can't believe how well this antenna worked. Even over all this rough terrain. A wide band antenna tuned to 462 MHz at center. The swr was and still is, 1.0:1...… Gain is 3.2 dbd...

What we did was modify the antenna of one of three handheld radios we were using. This became the base station. The Cobra radio we were using was capable of unscrewing the short whip antenna. That left a nice juicy SMA connector. No mutilation in the upcoming transmission line, Nice!

If you connect and of course impedance match an antenna like that to a handheld radio; the results can be awesome!
Remember; it's all in the antenna! You must impedance match it or all bets are off. Loss of power and fried finals will be the result.

Now it's on to 2.4 GHz.
I don't see any use for this band.. It should be band along with all the crazy people that attempt to use this evil voo-doo band. Ok I've had a few,,,, see you guys tomorrow; ha!!!!
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
The "cone of silence" of a radar site is about 2 miles diameter when you are using the lowest tilt... So if you are zoomed out, the dot that may represent the site location may be about as large as the cone. In all of my example radar shots, the dot representing the radar site is just a touch smaller than the cone, so it's just barely visible.

At each higher tilt, the cone gets smaller and if you are looking at a composite, it doesn't show much at all.
 

Rob Lancaster

Active Member
upload_2019-6-5_23-31-45.png

VCP 215

This is the general surveillance VCP when in precipitation mode. It offers very good low level coverage and the most upper-level vertical sampling of the atmosphere of any VCP. A full volume scan occurs about every six minutes.

Beam Spreading
radarcone.jpg
Doppler radar beam
In the graphic at the top of the page shows a max 19.5 degree up tilt. I'm still confused about the vertical null. Is the graphic showing just the center of the beam or the whole conical beam?
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
I'm still confused about the vertical null.

Forget the graphics then... Just remember if no data is shown directly above a radar site, it's because the beam doesn't look up... and it's more noticeable when you have zoomed in.

This isn't zoomed all of the way in, but it clearly shows where the radar can't see. Radar screen cap for May 20th, 2013, aka the Moore Tornado

BR.jpg
 

Rob Lancaster

Active Member
Cool...
How far away is Moore from KTLX?
Just trying to get an idea of the range in your great screen shot. What a hook!
 

Rob Lancaster

Active Member
That's defiantly closer in than I'm used to.
Yup that would explain it..
Hey got a little TS action passing to our SE... Barely in thunder range... Weak!
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
While this isn't as detailed as what I see in GrLevel3 ... it's still cool that you can do this and what is provided is as good as what is seen on the NWS website in so far as radar images.

First get and install Google Earth, then go to the NWS website here National Weather Service Doppler Radar Images and download the radar imagery that interests you, you can select multiple radar sites as well as composite types. These are updated every 2 minutes. Of course you can zoom in/out, tilt the images

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