Qualimetrics' Transportable Automated Meteorological Station (TAMS) is meeting with favorable response in the hazardous materials response community. The compact and versatile system provides the ease-of-use and reliability required by hazardous materials response teams in the field, and its attractive price tag promises to make it a front-runner in the market.
The TAMS sets up in minutes, and can communicate with a central HazMat computer using either a hard wire cable link or a UHF radio link. An optional built-in electronic compass makes deployment easier still by eliminating the need to orient the station manually during installation.
Compatibility with the leading plume modeling software is an important part of the TAMS design, and several manufacturers--including EIS International--have made it their weather system of choice for HazMat applications. Four fully integrated systems are available from Qualimetrics that cover the majority of HazMat applications, and custom systems can be readily built to incorporate special requirements.
The United States Air Force has ordered 21 TAMS II (Tactical Automated Meteorological Stations) for use as portable airport tower assistance weather stations. The TAMS II is a rugged, portable weather station that provides weather and altimeter data at landing zones that is more accurate than that available at many airports.
The 20-pound system fits into a single suitcase-size carrying case, and can be set up along with its accompanying tripod within five minutes. The TAMS II's rugged design and quick setup made it an ideal choice for the critical demands of the air force's air and land parachute deployment operations.
A new highway fog warning system installed by the California State Department of Transportation (Caltrans) using special weather sensors made its debut this past winter in a section of the Central Valley notorious for heavy fog and fog-related accidents.
The weather stations providing the meteorological data for the warning system are readily visible alongside Highway 120 and Interstate 5 near their intersection below Stockton, California. These stations, mounted on ten-meter-high towers, collect data on wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, visibility, temperature, and relative humidity, and pass the data along to Caltrans' central computer. The Caltrans computer interprets the data and--when it determines a visibility problem exists--posts a warning to motorists on a series of high-visibility roadway signs.
The warning system is proving to be a much-needed deterrent to the all too common accidents and traffic snarls that result from both summer dust storms and the dense fog that is a regular feature of Central Valley winters.
Asia Motors is one of the main contractors supplying Nuclear, Biological & Chemical Reconnaissance (NBC) Vehicles to the ROK Army. The VWOS systems are an integral part of both the wheeled version of the NBC vehicle--manufactured by Asia Motors--and the tracked version, manufactured by Daewoo Industries of Korea.
The VWOS system consists of a solid state sensor array that measures wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, ground temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure, along with an electronic compass for calculating true wind direction for the moving vehicle. The sensor array is mounted on a telescoping mast and the data is processed, displayed and printed by an instrumentation package located inside the vehicle.
Advanced
Measurements and Controls, Inc.