Greetings, relatively new owner here. For those with the Ambient Weather shield for the Air, I would appreciate your thoughts:
I hear it is a Very tight fit. Would you agree? Is it a problem? I am considering mobile use and worry about vibration impacting the Air through the mount.
Do you feel it is relatively sturdy? I have heard the metal bracket is worth the additional cost.
Thank you for your time,
Brian
I couldn’t get it to fit at all, had to cut into it to get it to fit. Still haven’t got it mounted up yet, as was unsure on how to mount it to the bottom of the shield, but I think I’ve got that sorted now, with a bolt the same thread as a tripod.
I was able to make it fit but you have to disassemble the plates, insert the Air and then put the plates back one at a time. You can not just insert the Air through the bottom. The Air does touch the plates which allows some heat transfer from the plates to the Air. This (plus lack of air circulation due to the tight fit) will cause at the temps to read a couple degrees high in full sun. The plastic bracket is flimsy and I wouldn’t recommend it for mobile use.
I don’t believe that there is a ready-made substitute for a Stevenson screen that will allow Air to fit in it. In my opinion, it is important not to allow conduction from the inside of the screen to the casing of Air. This implies that the inside diameter of the screen must be larger than the outside diameter of Air, with means to keep them separated. Ideally, also, the screen should have double louvres. I am sure there must be a market for a small Stevenson screen that could take Air and possibly a couple of sensors, with spaces, that could sell for, say, €200 to 250. Obviously, tooling costs would be very high so we would have to be looking at sales figures of, say, 2 to 3000. Would this be feasible?
Some place in the Amish country of Pennsylvania/USA, there is a craftsman who can probably knock Stevensen screens out for under $20 each…by hand. No way would I pay more for the radiation shield than I did for the sensor(s) inside…
Thanks for everyone’s replies. The contact between the shield and the air could be a problem for me because I’m planning mobile use, and the vibration could cause damage to the unit (outside and in), though a shield with “some space” could be worse in terms of periodic crashing around inside.
Most shields out there are designed for smaller sensor-only units, not the sort of hybrid we’re getting from WeatherFlow … so the shields are too small a diameter inside or not tall enough or both. (A future option to remove the base sensors from the Air enclosure would be nice … some day?). Unfortunately this rules out shields from R.M. Young, MeteoShield, COMET, etc.
I see there is already a page on this …
Photos of Air and Installation
And some other links -
http://www.digitalurban.org/2018/09/3d-printing-a-radiation-shield-for-the-weather-flow-air.html
https://jimboombaweather.com/station/stevenson.html
http://users.otenet.gr/~meteo/project_radiation-shield.html
Mine would be “well ventilated” so I might look for a sturdier version of something like this: https://comunidad.leroymerlin.es/t5/Proyectos-Talleres/Garita-para-estación-meteorológica/idi-p/161088
Brian
and you’d get one with perfect Baldwin brass on it, and probably free delivery too !
(still have my 30+ year old Sensenig’s stuff from New Holland PA - that place was the best !)