John Cranston Davis Vantage Pro2

John Cranston is the current tenant at Letham Shank Farm. Although from a farming background John was advised to ‘see the world’ and so went to sea, which is where his interest in weather began, and became Master Mariner with Shell. In 1987 the farm adjacent to his father's came up for let and John left the sea once he secured the tenancy. Letham Shank is a small mixed ‘family’ farm of 160ha located two miles west of Berwick-upon-Tweed and celebrates its 90th year in 2013. The farm grows grass, OSR, winter & spring barley, wheat and occasionally potatoes with contracting on another 100ha of similar cropping. It is 54m above sea level surrounded by open views with a large number of hedges, woods and relatively small fields.

At Cereals 2012 John discussed Davis Weather Stations with EnviroMonitors. He owned an ageing cabled Instromet Weather System but needed to replace it. “After helping several people to set up budget weather stations, I decided that the Davis was the most cost effective solution as no compromises in positioning of sensors had to be made with the wireless option”. John opted for the standard 6152UK Vantage Pro2 with optional Solar Sensor and the WeatherLink USB logger. John found his Vantage Pro2 to be a “very simple setup; deciding the correct location and fixtures for sensors was crucial and the Met Office gives advice on heights and distance from buildings etc”. Local farmers regularly use John's data for various purposes and all have been very impressed both by hardware and quality of data produced.

John Cranston Davis Transmitter

John finds “simply having the current conditions at my fingertips is very useful and it is unconsciously used throughout the day”. “Viewing trends of temperature or wind speed allows me to plan the day ahead and decide, for example, if it will be a spray day” which is most useful to John. The console is in the office connected to his PC by the USB logger. Instead of using the included WeatherLink software John tends to view the weather on his PC screen using Cumulus software, several times a day. His weather data is uploaded to his website and “I have an Android App ‘Weather Station for Cumulus’ which displays current conditions on my phone and tablet which is extremely useful”.

A seperate transmitter for the anemometer has just been added to the station to allow it to be placed in a better location for the most accurate readings on site. After using the Vantage Pro2 John feels he would opt for the FARS (Fan Assisted) sensor array when replacing his current station to reduce further any direct heating from the sun. In the future John would like to add a soil temperature sensor to his station “as this would be most relevant to my decision making, particularly in spring when sowing and applying nitrogen fertiliser”. The Davis range of weather stations would be recommended by John “Without doubt”.