The RM Young Wind Monitor. (stock ad photo)
Passes all the initial checks as per the manual.
Mechanically smooth, well balanced and no bad bearings.
Took an ohm reading while rotating it in wind vane fashion and got a smooth, variable reading.
Bearings and potentiometer are the common items that need replacement and all passed.
I've got more proper testing I'll do but it's looking good.
Won't be up and running this year but it will be here ready to go.
Wire colors in cable, red, blue, green, yellow, white, black. What's what?
Open it up and those wires go to a small PC board that has, red, red, black, black, green, white. What's what?
Look at wiring schematic. Hint: "potentiometer wiring is 28 ga. Wind speed coil wiring is 22ga"
Sure enough, two reds are different wire gauges and two blacks are as well. The thicker red and black wires are for wind speed and the thinner red and black are for wind direction. Then it was just a matter of using an ohm meter to verify which wire on the board is which wire in the cable.
Need to get a stub of 1" pipe and a floor flange. Screw the flange down to a piece of wood and put pipe into the flange. Then the wind monitor can mount onto the pipe. Basically, I'll be making a stand for it.
I'll make some lines on the board to represent points or directions on a compass for N, S, E, W. Then I can put some DC voltage to the potentiometer and find out where North is by turning the weather vane part of it and reading voltage between negative DC and a third wire. The lowest reading, at or near zero volts is North and 180 out from that should give me the highest voltage reading.
I can take it to work the weekend after next and do some testing for wind speed readings.
Then I just need a $400 controller to connect it to so I can see the wind speed/direction on screen in real time.(with it mounted it outdoors of course) I'll probably put it up near the house for now on a pipe that will really be too short.
The installation part of the manual has guidelines for the effects of buildings on wind. The wind gets disturbed for twice the height of a structure, above said structure and upwind from it. The tunnel is 15 foot tall so I'm going to put the wind monitor 30 feet away from the tunnel, in the direction of the prevailing winds.(and storm gusts) I'll probably put it 15 foot off the ground which is pretty low but I'm not looking to record proper weather data. I'm using it to close up a 15 foot tall high tunnel in high winds.
Looks like it will be decent weather to set a tunnel frame tomorrow.
I just looked it up .... hope you got a great deal on it!!