Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) Demonstration Program.

An operational demonstration of the Automated Weather Observing System AWOS was conducted at 14 airport installations in the contiguous United States and Alaska. The AWOS demonstration units employed were procured from two system manufacturers, WeatherMeasure and Artais, and consisted of commercially available equipment including sensors, processors, and auxiliary hardware. The sensors were used to detect and measure nine atmospheric parameters cloud height, visibility, wind speed, wind direction, barometric pressure, temperature, dew point, precipitation occurrence, and precipitation amount. These data were then digitized, processed, synthesized into voice messages, and updated each minute. Access to the voice message by pilots in flight was accomplished by very high frequency VHF omnidirectional range VOR or discrete VHF, and for preflight purposes, by telephone access. This report discusses the analyses and provides results and conclusions derived from AWOS demonstration source data collected during the period September 1983 through June 1984. Source data included pilot questionnaire user response, maintenance personnel failure logs, hourly AWOS observations, and official observations when available. It was concluded that, in general, the performance of the system and all sensors at the 14 field sites was acceptable except for the ceilometer and precipitation sensors.