Tempest on a boat (and other moving things?)

I have had a Tempest at the top of my mast for the last couple of summers. (I realize this is a small group of users. Maybe one user, me.)

Of course, that creates issues with wind data in particular. Until recently, I was using Node-RED/Signalk to adjust the wind direction and wind speed based on the boat’s compass heading and speed over ground. The N face of the tempest points toward the bow, so the wind angle is always relative to the bow.

Recently, I ported the Node-RED flows to a TS Signalk plugin. Signalk is an open-source boat data management system that many run on RPIs on boats. But I also have it running on my Mac and an Ubuntu AWS micro instance. I think it would largely work with anything on the move, with some minor tweaking and a connected GNSS/IMU device.

The Plugin consumes all UDP data and all other standard data defined in the WeatherFlow UDP, WS, and REST docs.

However, while I can correct for wind speed and wind angle, I cannot dynamically change the location of the hub, so the forecast data is useless unless I am in my homeport. (And in some way, my data is also corrupting the underlying weatherflow data and may result in seemingly odd readings in general for my station. The data is corrected locally but not in the data sent to weatheflow from the hub)

If others use SignalK and have their Tempest on a moving object, here is the repo: GitHub - motamman/signalk-weatherflow

Of course, I may be a member of a club of one.

Pax,

Mo

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I had installed a Tempest on a dock, and found that in storms the dock would both rotate (so the wind angle would be wrong) as well as develop oscillating waves along its length which when it got to the tempest (on a pole) would swing the tempest so far back and forth that the wind-gap would close off to the wind and give a false reading (60mph then zero, then 60mph then zero). In short, I wouldn’t recommend it.

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Over the last five years or so, I have had a Sky and a Tempest installed on various floating docks and boats, and I have never had the problem you describe.