Gone hiking

kittyhas1000legs

That's a lot of claws!
Original poster
Pub Member / Supporter
Aug 8, 2012
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Western Slope, CO
My wife and I hiked the Black Ridge trail at the Colorado National Monument last weekend. I see this hill every day, but it takes some effort to get to. 10.6 miles LOS according to TVFool, but it's a 20+ minute drive up the monument plus a bit of hiking on the trail. KFQX, KKCO, KRMJ, K22JN, and K25FZ are all up there.
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Now what the heck is this? Near the beginning of the CCC Trail, across the road from the Colorado National Monument visitor's center. I'm most curious about the thing that looks like a pizza dish with an oversized C-band feedhorn cover on it. It's not aimed at the antenna hill, but skyward. To the left is the shadow of a solar panel.

whatintheheck.jpg
 
I second USGS. Got (similar) ones near. Usually mounted on a bridge monitoring river levels. Either that or NOAA remote sensing, Or could be 'shared' between the two.
But I don't see an anemometer? Could be a university natural science set up I would also suppose.
 
I second USGS. Got (similar) ones near. Usually mounted on a bridge monitoring river levels. Either that or NOAA remote sensing, Or could be 'shared' between the two.
But I don't see an anemometer? Could be a university natural science set up I would also suppose.

There's an anemometer next to the visitor's center across the street. I might ask next time we go hiking up there, or go right up to it (easily accessible) and see if I can see some manufacturer's marks and part numbers.
 
It's a Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS) There are a few thousand of them in the U.S. Most of the ones around here have a 400 MHz cross yagi antenna pointed at a NOAA GOES satellite. Not sure about the gray antenna pointed skyward in your photo. Looks too small for 400 MHz, maybe some now have L Band antennas?

From your photo, I'm guessing that the wire brush looking thing sticking above the tower is to bleed off static electricity, in an attempt to prevent lightning hits. The arm off the right side of the tower looks like it has a small GPS antenna on it. The large white mushroom thing looks very similar to the temperature sensors around here. A fan inside the bottom of the stem blows air up and out the "gills" of the mushroom. Sensors inside the stem measure temperature and dew point. The white top keeps the sun from heating it up. And of course that is a rain gauge on the ground to the right of the tower.

Here is a link where you can look at data from any RAWS. http://mesowest.utah.edu/

Click on the state of interest, then on the upper left side, were it says Network: select All Networks from the drop down box. Then click on Refresh Map. Hover over the black dots to get some weather info, or click on the dot to get graphs and more detailed weather info. Usually somewhere they have the Lat and Long of the weather station, so you can find it on Google Earth.

Here is a screen capture of data from what I think is the weather station in your photo. FaT Air is right, clicking on the wind buttons shows no data available.

CNM RAWS.jpg
 

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