Anyone here runnng Weatherlink v5.3 or later and interested in doing a
little software testing? To explain:

It's not uncommon for growers (ie farmers, soft fruit growers, orchard
owners etc) to need detailed monthly weather stats to help with
irrigation scheduling, disease prediction etc. The wealthier ones can
of course afford specialist systems and advice but, increasingly, the
more cost-conscious are looking at eg Davis Vantage Pro stations as a
source of data. But while Weatherlink can obviously produce its
monthly NOAA reports, these have relatively few parameters and fixed
format whereas the irrigation and disease modelling programs need
input data in their own particular format. Consequently we get asked
from time to time whether it's possible to produce custom summary
reports from the WL data.

As a possible answer , we've now got a prototype utility that will
read standard Weatherlink files and which offers a lot more
flexibility in selecting and generating summary monthly values. This
utility is currently in early beta form and is at the point where I
could do with some external feedback from one or two experienced
Weatherlink users.

So if anyone is interested in doing a little evaluation then please
drop me an email. I'd stress that this isn't yet a polished final
product and there are bound to be hiccups in using it. So this isn't
really for anyone easily frustrated by PCs. Indeed it's more for those
who are fairly comfortable working with new Windows programs.

Finally, though I've focused on the crop-related aspects above, it is
also potentially relevant to the maintenance of weather records more
generally and does include for example a preliminary algorithm for
estimating bright sunshine hours from VP solar irradiance data.

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk