Weather Station Recommendations?

[curtis reed]

Originally Posted by bykr

I've had good luck with my Kestrel.

Originally Posted by SSGN

The Kestrel is hard to beat and the price is right. Fletcher and the Biondos put me onto it when we raced Jr,s. Got mine from Biondos as it is nice to support our own.

There are Kestrels with prediction?

[Ed Wright]

Originally Posted by curtis reed

There are Kestrels with prediction?

Curtis, I never found a hand held that predicted my car nearly as well as Crew Chief Pro software in my laptop. Type in data from my weather station into Crew Chief Pro, and use it’s prediction. Make Edwards put me into Crew Chief Pro a long time ago. He used it to know what to expect from his Pro Stock car. As always, Mike was correct.

[Lee Valentine]

Crew Chief Pro is the best I've ever used.

[Hacksaw]

Crew Chief Pro a handheld ?

[Ed Wright]

Originally Posted by Hacksaw

Crew Chief Pro a handheld ?

No sir. I thought I said “software in my laptop”. Type weather data from your weather station & run data from your time sips into Crew Chief Pro software in your laptop. Sorry it I was not clear. I’m old.

[FireSale]

I'm with Ed. I hate hauling a laptop to the track when I'm a "flatbed and tent" racer, but my Altronics was always way off while the same data through Crew Chief Pro was dead on. I just gave the laptop a new SSD so it will start up faster and have better battery life. Hoping for better driving skills this year...

[Mike Pearson]

I am using the Altronics PC trailer based system and have been happy with it. it took a bit to get used to it as I am not real computer savvy. I like the log book feature and the ability to choose the runs I want as the basis for the predictions. I also like the feature to get the weather conditions from your run and automatically up load that to the log book. No need to run in to the trailer after the run to log the weather. I don't have the paging feature but could add it if I choose. All in all I would recommend it. Good value for the cost if you already have a laptop.

One thing about weather stations is good info in and good info out. You have to know how to read the info and interpret how it will effect the cars performance.

[Altronics]

All PerformAIRE systems allow for Multi-Run and Single Run prediction capability.

Multi-Run - Requires data base of runs to establish a prediction algorithm between weather variables and your vehicles performance.

Single Run - Uses last "Good" run or time run and standard factors to calculate performance based on weather. Also allows user to enter custom factors for their vehicle.


Using local or phone weather:
Generally local weather is provided by the nearest weather collection station from you current location (Schools, municipalities, airports). This can vary from a few miles to 10's of miles depending on your location. These systems typically update the weather a few times per hour. Although this data can be helpful, it is not as accurate as readings at the track using the SAME equipment. This can definitely add some confusion to your prediction if one reference station is calibrated to a different barometric reference than another!
So maybe if it is mid day and the temperature is stable, getting a local reading twice an hour may work OK, but racing in the morning or late afternoon to evening when the DA is changing 100' every 10-15 minutes if going to prove difficult if you don't have current accurate readings.


WIND Data:
Another important factor when trying to predict ET or Throttle Stop settings regarding weather stations is the use of a Wind Sensor. 50% of your weather prediction can come from the effect of the wind. Neglecting or disregarding what the wind is doing is going to make it difficult to predict your car accurately. Wind is one of the hardest weather parameters to measure because it is inconsistent, but it still effects the performance. Using a laptop based system with streaming graphical weather and wind info and watching the average and gust wind speed is critical to determine what may happen going down the race track. Even having a pager with the last half hour of wind data can help you know what the best and worst case effect the wind will have on your run and your ET.