On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:34:55 +0100, Hugh Newbury
wrote:
One has to wonder why the tipping
bucket has been thought worth keeping for so long ( a century or more?).


There have been quite a number of other designs too of course, eg
syphon arrangements. I dare say someone could write a fairly extensive
history (and may well have done so already for all I know).

Most AWS systems will want a fully automatic - ie self-emptying -
gauge and that presumably is the biggest challenge. The fact that the
TBR (tipping bucket) design remains the commonest, at least among more
affordable gauges, does rather suggest that it has stood the test of
time as the most cost-effective and perhaps, for all its faults, least
inaccurate/unreliable option.

But I do think that you need to separate out the location of the gauge
from its measurement mechanism. A VP2 gauge positioned on the ground
would have the single biggest source of variability removed and I
think you might then be surprised at the improvement vs a standard
reference gauge.

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk