Davis weather stations routinely last over a decade with minimal maintenance. But it's never a bad idea to do annual preventative maintenance on your system. This year your trusty, hard-working, never-miss-a-data-packet station can get the royal treatment!

Here’s a step by step tutorial on how to do it. Your station will thank you with more years of reliable data.

We have a Complete Tune Up Kit for Vantage Pro2 and Complete Tune Up Kit Vantage Vue, with everything you need to give your station a spa day. You’ll save money and time.

(We've also got videos to walk you through

Davis are top-quality USA made weather instruments, built for long-term accuracy and reliability. However, they still benefit from a little TLC from time-to-time to help them continue to perform to their potential. Read on for tips on how to maintain and clean a Davis Vantage Vue or Davis Vantage Pro 2 Weather Station.

Anemometer

Your anemometer should provide years of service. In some areas however, spiders and insects can affect operation. If wind speed seems low, use an allen key wrench to loosen the setscrew on the side of the wind cups. Remove the wind cups, and clean the exposed portion of the shaft with a damp cloth

St Annes Old Links Golf Club has been established since 1901 on land which since 1886 had been home to the Lytham & St. Anne’s Golf Club. The club is located in the North West of England about a mile from the Royal Lytham Open 2012 venue.

Stuart Hogg is the Course Manager at St Annes Old Links and has been at the club for over 8 years. Stuart controls the budgets and purchasing of equipment, and has the responsibility of maintaining the greens, fairways and even the car park! The course has 7 full time staff and 4 part time staff depending on the time of year. Stuart started a career in greenkeeping as his “ideal job would be one which he could still play football on a Saturday afternoon!”. He started a Youth Training Scheme job at a championship course local to home and has been developing his knowledge, understanding and skills ever since.

Stuart had used a Davis Vantage

The British Antarctic Survey purchased their first Davis Vantage Pro from us in 2004 to use on the air strip at Sky-Blu, http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Living_and_Working/Stations/Sky_Blu/index.html. The instrument is used to give reliable information to their support aircraft during take off and landings. The groomed blue ice runway is up to 1.2 km in length and 50 m wide, permanently marked by flags.

A second purchase in 2005 means the new Davis Vantage Pro 2, with its increased transmission range of up to 300 metres, is to be located at Fossil Bluff later in the year, http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Living_and_Working/Stations/Fossil_Bluff/index.html. This site is a facility for refueling aircraft

The Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex is the largest research group in the UK studying honey bees and other social insects the bees, wasps and ants that live in a colony with a queen and workers. LASI research studies the honey bee and other social insects "in the round" addressing both applied and basic questions.

Their Davis Vantage Pro 2 station was installed after being acquired as part of the Sussex Plan for Honey Bee Health and Well Being. Dr Martyn Stenning, Technician for the University of Sussex' Biology and Environmental Science department and Mr Phil Chitty from the ITS support, installed the meteorological station on the roof of the Laboratory. It is hooked up to a laptop inside the laboratory where it will feed information through on a daily basis. Dr Margaret Couvillon said: "The weather station will provide accurate and up to date information

During 2009 Oregon Scientific changed their instruction about the data logger capacity the 2010 manual is correct and says;

There are a few possibilities when you experience no connection or no download.

The station is a serial data logger so it need to connect to correct serial port. On conventional PCs this is the 9 pin D connector. Serial is always the preferable connection as it is hardware controlled and not a software device such as USB. However today most consumer PCs and all lap tops come without a serial connection.

If they are using a USB to serial adapter then they need to have installed the drivers that came with the adapter. This will create a VCP (virtual com port) and again they need to know the port number it creates. The driver software will usually tell them this otherwise they can find it from their Windows Device Manager > Ports.

Once they do this communication should be OK.

Very occasionally we hear reports that the station stops receiving data. This is usually because something has affected the data logger, possibly an electrical

Here is a link for the manufacturers "HeavyWeather" software for the WS2800;

http://www.lacrossetechnology.fr/dl_it.php?fichier=setup_hw_wv5_eu.exe

At the time of writting the station does not work directly with WeatherDisplay. It can be used by setting WeatherDisplay to "piggy back" on the HeavyWeather data files.

If you need to replace the ISS transmitter board or the Temperature Humidity sensor then here is a link to a couple of video clips on the Davis web site that explains how;

http://www.davisnet.com/product_documents/weather/manuals/07395-243_IM_06930.pdf (Select the web address, right click & select 'go to web page')