Ref. WEAT0001

For many years commercial vessels have received weather forecasts via radioteletype (RTTY) from the German National Weather Agency (DWD). Whilst a few intrepid yachtsmen have tuned into this excellent service, with a general purpose HF receiver connected to a personal computer, results have often been dissapointing. Weatherman combiness a synthesised HF receiver, a powerful computer and a high contrast display to form a complete, reliable, stand alone RTTY receiver. Unlike Navtex, which is an international service for navigational and meteorological warnings, weatherman is dedicated to receiving weather forecasts.
DWD operates on a 24 hour continuous schedule and broadcasts continually on several frequencies simultaneously. This helps to cope with the radio propagation and reception conditions which vary with time of day and the distance from the transmitter.
The DWD service is free to yachtsmen but must not be used for commercial purposes.
The daily schedule includes times of day, frequencies and areas of coverage. The user can program Weatherman to record information only from areas of interset. The memory is able to store several thousand lines of text. Details of further Atlantic coverage together with the latest schedule are available from www.dwd.de.


Technical specifications :

- 16 lines x 40 characters per screen
- Very hidh contrast display with white backlight
- Supply voltage nominal 12v
- Consumption 50mA @ 12v (100mA with backlight)
- Power save auto timer on backlight
- Spectrum screen for simple signal analysis
- Non volitile program and message memory
- Compact sizeL L-150mm, H-112mm, D-42mm
- Active Micro antenna: H-175mm x 40mm. 7M Cable
- The availability of the DWD signals is dependent on radio propagation and local conditions