One of the latest TV thrillers gripping the heart-strings of each occupant in our house of late has been Storm Chasers on Discovery. So far, the show has been very illuminating, and is doing a good job of recruiting. Allie and I are having some semi-serious discussions about making a pilgrimage or two down toward Tornado Alley (ooooh! good nickname for the whirl-winded-wife!!).
As I have discussed before, I have a thirst for gadgets, and I haven't had nearly as many as I would like in the recent past. Trouncing tornadoes might be just what I need to quench that desire for a time. The other part helping that along would be designing and building our own RADAR system for the chase vehicle. After seeing the DOW on Storm Chasers, I know there is LOTS of room for improvement, and I have it: End-Fire RADAR Arrays. I've worked a bit with phased arrays, and end-fire arrays aren't much different for this type of use. The advantage we would have over the DOW is that we could build it on much smaller vehicles. What I would like is to have a kit of eight arrays to attach to any vehicle, but only requiring a minimum of 4. The software controlling the RADAR would be able to change it's usage of the arrays based upon their positioning on the vehicle, allowing you use almost any vehicle you want!
More to come later!!
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Um, babe? If you can perfect this, you will probably revolutionize storm chasing. And you can put that clunk DOW out of bizness. LOL
ReplyDeleteThanks, Tornado Allie!! That would be great, as it looks like both need to be done.
ReplyDeleteGet this: Multiple vehicles taking crossing and parallel paths in an area, all sharing their weather information via computer, so they can zero in on the action and practically guarantee the the ability to get good probe data!
Exactly! Why in the hell haven't they come up with this yet? IT seems like there isn't nearly enough cross-over between the computer nerd and the weather nerd communities. All they need is an ex-Navy guy who has worked with radar AND computers to come up with something... ;)
ReplyDeleteIf only I could come up with a twitter tie-in as well. You know, for when it works. :^D
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