Well it was a wild and crazy day for storms in southwestern Oklahoma as the clash of the air masses fought to dominate the landscape. Unfortunately I had to work like most, but you could tell by the talk of chasers on facebook the night before, it was going to be a good one. I sat back after returning home from work only to see the action that chasers such as Brandon Sullivan, Ben Holcomb, etc captured. I was thinking, boy I wished I had taken off work instead. However, the day wasn't a total loss. By dinnertime, I spent the evening deciding on what to update to the chase vehicle for the 2012 season which is only four months away.
Coming off the door prize I walked away from the National Weather Festival, a Maximum Signal In vehicle wireless amplifier I was ready to begin.
This is a really cool product that I definately recommend. Here is their link:
Also check out Steve Millers blog to find out what he thinks about the unit. They can be found here in his thread
and heres the follow up.
They were quick to ship it out to me and I'm in the process of deciding where to install it. Hopefully soon I'll have images posted here in coming blogs. Here is the package:
Now first off, theres nothing like having enough power outlets in your chase vehicle. It makes for a better appearance and more importantly, more leg room. You see, I normally placed the power inverter on the passenger side floor board quickly allowing me to setup in a hurry to the two power outlets the blazer has beneath the dash. Most of the time I used both of them, but hoped to someday setup another one for those who might be needing power in the rear seat. The solution: place a new outlet on the rear of the center console. It was actually very easy due to the removable cover on the back side. I image that GM had the idea for either an outlet or easy access to the consoles floor bolts holding it in place. I simply went down to the local AutoZone store and purchased a new well for a cigerette lighter and drilled out the hole. After running a new power lead with an inline fuse directly to the battery, the final result is shown here.
This is going to be a big help if additional power is needed during future chases and I was quite happy with the end result. Now the second update I did is an issue I'll had to deal with all season long in 2011. Its the streaming camera. In the past, I setup the dash camcorder to plug into a video converter that sent the live views to the computer and transmitted to ChaserTV. But after speaking with Steve Miller who attended a meeting at television station KTUL-8 in Tulsa last spring, he brought up the point of going with a smaller webcam called the Microsoft LiteCam. This baby is super sweet and works well in all kinds of lighting. But picking up one of these babies, I no longer would tie up my HD camcorder if I captured a tornado. With the new LiteCam, I was ready for spring 2011. One of the drawbacks at first was I couldn't find a decent way of setting up the cam. At times in a hurry, duct-taping the camera to the dash was a common thing to do. So I had to come up with a better way of freeing up the camera placement. Drilling out two holes into my videocams bracket, I was able to add another tab that now holds the LiteCam in place. Here is the results.
So as you can see, this is going to make next seasons chase even better. Next on the list in the coming blog is wiring the emergency lightning system to the cage and front flashers.
