Wireless, Solar-Powered Wunder Station

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Orion Weather Stations

Weather MicroServer

We don't normally encourage “home users", but this guy is a serious weather buff and willing to invest in a professional weather station!

A lifelong passion to experience, enjoy and measure the weather

Michael Koenig began building his own weather instruments in early grade school. Growing up in a family of farmers in the Midwest, where being keen on weather was critical to their livelihood, Michael says that his interest in weather was “already in (his) DNA!”

His first instrument was an anemometer, with a small DC motor, variable resistor, milliammeter, piano wire and ping-pong balls for supplies. He cut the ping pong balls in half and glued them to the piano wire, which was attached to the motor shaft. “My dad drove the car while I held the anemometer out the window to calibrate it.”

As time went on, Michael’s love for measuring weather grew with each new generation of weather instrumentation. He worked at several TV stations as a broadcast engineer, eventually becoming an electronics technician for 41 years. “I hung out a lot around the weather radar and weather station equipment,” he says.

Recently retiring to southwest Florida, a region known for having the most lightning and thunderstorms in the country, Michael reached out to CWS to acquire a high-performance station to track the crazy weather southwest Florida often has, eventually selecting an Orion™ Weather Station.

Easy Installation

Michael's station configuration (shown below) includes a Weather Display, solar power system, wireless transceiver, lightning arrestor, and a Weather MicroServer™ which uploads data to Weather Underground®.

The organized packaging, labeled components, and convenient laminated station diagram were helpful for a smooth installation, Michael noted. He had the station up and running the afternoon after he received it, “just in time for a typical afternoon Florida thunderstorm to rumble through!”

Michael also had professional installation to protect the mast in the event of a lightning strike, including two 10-foot ground rods. The lightning protection measures proved to be a wise investment, as within one hour of powering up the Orion, lightning struck about 2,000 feet from his home! Shown below is the strike display on a radar map.

A “Stellar” Product

“If I could go back in time, I would get my PhD and be a hurricane hunter,” Michael says. While he did not study meteorology in school, he notes that it has nevertheless been “a lifelong passion to experience, enjoy and measure the weather.” With the move to Florida, he now has “the best of the best weather station” to continue to do so.

Michael wrote that he chose CWS because we:

• – Offer the highest technology possible across all market segment and price points,
• – Have great system integration between all components, and
• – Provide “exemplary” customer service.

“Each new storm keeps the passion going after over 50 years of monitoring the weather,” Michael comments. “Thanks for delivering a stellar product. I can't think of a more capable station for southwest Florida!”

Call for a quote toll free 1-866-625-8620 or email.