Two Things

[Skyking69]

All,


Thanks for looking at this. When I wrote to them a forum moderator suggested that I repost a link to this area. It was regarding a project I am engaged with and which I am really, really, having a hard time getting traction on. But, first I wanted to pass along a comment. Could someone please make a short post and get it stickied that says just what OpenCPN is? There is a lot of action in this area, but other than the fact that I was referred here I am kind of lost as to what it refers to. Anyway, on to my help request.


I made a post at Radar - Nontraditional Application Question...Can ANYONE Help?. And while it quickly garnered several hundred reads, and a number of comments/suggestions, I continue to run into brick walls.


Pointed to one at that post, I have written to a commercial off the shelf (COTS) vendor for a product that could - could - solve our needs, but they use a proprietary data output and so I am not at all optimistic that their offering will address our needs. I was super excited to see referral to "OpenBR24 https://sourceforge.net/projects/openbr24/ that will display a Navico (Lowrance,Simrad and B&G) radar on windows that I am using.", but when I went there it is apparently a dead project. Not updated since 2015 and with no contact info and dead links I am stalled there. I wrote to SourceForge, but they are some kind of media company that owns SourceForge, so I am again not very optimistic.


A careful read of my initial post should pretty succinctly spell out what we are trying to do, but for those that want the Cliff's Notes version:

• I am an officer in the Red River Valley Amateur Radio Club (RRVARC) in Northeast Texas USA.
• We are geographically located in a "hole" in weather radar coverage in the United States.
• Weather radar is so distant that curvature of the Earth means weather is only depicted 18,000' above the center of our area of operations.
• Our group provides weather observer reports and other data to local emergency preparedness personnel at the shared city/county "Emergency Operations Center" (EOC) and to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth Texas via "ham" radio.
• We have great need to fill in the weather radar gap so that personnel at the EOC can have improved situational awareness of weather and personnel out in the field. We also need those in the field to be able to see where weather is relative to their position. Rain wrapped tornadoes are not visible without radar.
• We are exploring use of a marine radar to provide data where it is not otherwise available for use on our emergency services page (not yet published) on the Club website (www.wb5rdd.org).
• We insist on 100% control over the weather radar data stream and its use.

I have spent a lot of time searching the Internet, writing to hardware manufacturers, etc., and so far nothing. I keep posting the link to it because it is so important, our Club website has a licensed reprint of a Washington Post article Radar gaps threaten millions as severe weather season ramps up in U.S. that really explains the issue. Millions of lives are imperiled due to the problem. At this point we cannot solve it for ourselves, much less for anyone else, but the problem cries out for solution. And I firmly believe the first savvy radar manufacturer that comes up with a real COTS system, one that turns loose of the proprietary data limitations, and can be sold turnkey into these communities; they stand to do quite well.


Can anyone here help us to even get started?


Much thanks,


Phillip Beall (W5EBC)