Crestline Soaring Society

I have not deleted any posts or comments from the forum in quite some time. A forum user thinks some content has been removed. The site logs for the last couple of days don't show any deletions, but there's been so much activity that they only go back a couple of days at this point. {UPDATE: I've just increased the log retention}

[b]Normal procedure is for those with deletion rights (i.e. the CSS Board) to discuss it with other board members before deleting anything. We've only deleted a couple of items in the last four years.

So, the Simba weather station went off line a couple of Sundays ago and a simple reboot didn't get it back online. On inspection I found that the weather equipment was fine and that the mini computer between it and the internet wasn't connecting to the LAN via ethernet. The only way to communicate with the device is via the LAN, so I had to send it in for service. This is the machine we repaired this summer by replacing the motherboard, keeping the RAM and the Flash memory with the OS and programs already on them, to the tune of $300. I expect the manufacturer to cover the failure under warranty.

I got a new rotor and cups assembly for the weather station anemometer and installed them today. Last night I epoxied the cups into the snap-in brackets on the rotor. The cup I super-glued back on to the old rotor a couple of weeks ago held but one of the others came out in the last high wind event. I had put drops of super-glue on the other cup brackets, but not in the junctions.

7/21/09 UPDATE:

The manufacturer replaced the motherboard and re-used the Operating System chip (no longer available) and the Flash memory from the old unit, so all settings were preserved. It was literally plug-and-play! The webcam time lapse images are also functional once again - they stopped working because the scripts that manage them depend on the weather data.

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ALL MEMBERSHIPS EXPIRED 5/31/09 - if you did not get a renewal notice in the mail please go to CSS Application & Waiver, print and complete the forms, and mail them in with your dues.

See: Meeting announcement in the Events section.

Location Changed - The morning church service will now be at a different facility, near the originally announced location. See the link below.

We have decided, with Juanita Jackson's blessing, to honor Rob Kells at this year's Andy Jackson Memorial Fly-In, Saturday September 6, 2008. Trish Kells has planned a church service for Rob that morning and all are invited to attend the church service or come to the fly-in, or both. Please see the announcement on the Wills Wing website for details.

The proximate cause of the webserver overload seems to have been some kind of fruitless but resource hogging spam bot attack, which I think we've dealt with. A couple of other minor issues, which have been dealt with by the webhost, may have been contributing factors.

I know everyone's post-fly-in enthusiasm may have waned a bit by now, but it would be great to have reports and pictures of that great event.

Our website, along with thousands of others, went down Saturday afternoon and was not restored for close to 36 hours. The problem was an electrical explosion at the data center in Houston where the server is located; the fire department there ordered that the backup generators could not be turned on, due to the nature of the damage.

The servers were not damaged and nothing was lost from our website.

Comparing the replacement anemometer/wind vane ($139) with the old one, it is obvious that ice got up inside the old unit (when the mast bent over) and damaged the bearings or whatever. The old vane and cups wiggle around like a hula dancer.

Sorry it took so long to replace.

The folks where the weather station lives changed from cable internet to DSL, and there was a hitch in the transition, so I went up there and found a subnet mask setting to change and got them back on the net.

The power supply to the Ultimeter 2100 weather base unit had gone out, somehow. Made a trip to Radio Shack in Crestline and got a replacement, which got the weather station back up. The anemometer readings still aren't getting to the base station, and it was too damp, cold, and windy to get up on the roof without a spotter.

After voting (With a paper ballot! My candidate might win this time!) I went to the Ball's house to see what I could do for the weather station. They weren't home, so I couldn't get to anything, but looking at the sensor mast I saw that one of the lower mounts had shifted around a bit, making the mast only appear to be bent. One of the anemometer cups is off and David found it on their deck. If the cup can't be snapped back on (they have to be snapped on when the unit is unpacked) I can replace the anemometer/wind vane with the old non-heated one. The heated one freezes up pretty readily, so no big deal.

Our webhost applied some upgrades to the server last night, and our website naturally had a number of problems today. At first, only the weather pages were working, then the site was displaying properly but user logins were broken and the Oz Report Headlines weren't being fetched.

If you run into any odd/new website behaviors, please let me know.

Latest Glitch:
Fixed! Same Day! (1/17)

Set for Saturday, Dec 22nd, 2007 (click for details)

Dianne McKenzie and photographer Julie Haynes have been collecting a mixture of HG and PG photos over the last year for a CSS 2008 Calendar. Ken Scott, a member who works at Xerox has laid the calendar out and had 200 copies printed.

The calendar looks GREAT!
Lots of beautiful flying photos and fun photos of members and fly-in crowds.

$20 each. Mailing one within California costs $5, slightly more for multiple copies or out-of-state.

See event announcement

I've added pages for the proposed HAM class and the two summer fly-ins to the Events section and the Events menu. There's also a new 'Projects' page and menu item.

All website members can edit or add to these pages, so if you have ideas, pertinent links, have at it. Posting and editing works much like forum posting does. Email if you have questions. Don't worry about messing things up. You won't break the site, and we can fix or rearrange as needed.

The controls for the tabular weather info listing in the weather page are once again functional, so you can change both the number of records displayed and the interval between displayed records. The page refreshes the table info once a minute (without reloading the page) so the latest info will always be shown. The data is also refreshed when you change the number of records or interval, or just push the 'set table' button (hidden until you click one of the boxes).

See: Elsinore LZ Temporarily Closed - 23 Feb 07

(This was posted by Spike as a comment to a recent thread. I copied it here to make it more prominent)

EHGA has won a court order. The man has given us some rules listed below. Please don't jeopardize the site. Below listed simple note from EHGA lawyer. The rules are for the LZ. The defendants have been in the LZ confronting pilots to use against EHGA.. Thanks for helping. Spike