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View Full Version : Shanwell Upper Air Station, Fife – Aug '09



wolfism
27-08-2009, 09:42 PM
Shanwell Upper Air Station lies to the north of RAF Leuchars, beyond the sand dunes on the North Sea coast, and tucked under the eaves of Tentsmuir Forest. It was the base's weather station for several decades; as well as taking readings of temperature, pressure, rainfall and so on, radiosonde balloons were released every few hours to measure conditions at high altitude – thus the "Upper Air Station" title. Shanwell’s international met. station code was 03170. The balloons were like Rover – the giant white blob that chased Patrick McGoohan across the beach in The Prisoner – and climbed into the stratosphere to sample the jetstreams and thin air.

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The location is rural, but not untouched – in between the firebreaks of nearby Tentsmuir Forest are World War Two concrete bunkers, now overgrown with moss and scrub. Half a mile along the road is Tayport. The forest was first planted in 1895, but the trees were felled for pit props during World War One, when the area was used as a rifle range; the butts are still visible south-east of the site. The forest covered 1500ha at the start of the Second World War, when many of the coastal trees were felled again, and the rifle range reinstated; there are still bunkers and lookouts dating from that time strung along the coast, along with the remains of the range control buildings, currently occupied by an irascible hermit. On the Tay shore to the east of Shanwell is a two foot-narrow gauge railway which once carried war materiel to the ranges, which the shifting sands occasionally reveal then envelop again.

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Upper Air Stations in 1990’s were composed of a computer-based automatic weather station - the Semi-Automatic Met Observing System (SAMOS). Before that, manned balloons, then kites, were initially used to measure temperature, pressure and wind in the free air. That in turn drove the development of small, lightweight, mechanical recording instruments and some of these “meteographs” remained in use until almost the middle of the 20th century. But by 1931, the development of radio telegraphy and compact electrical batteries led to the advent of the radiosonde. It’s effectively a miniature sounding system, held aloft by a balloon, which sends back its data using a small radio transmitter. Although ground-based radars and satellite-based remote sensing have appeared more recently,*radiosonde measurements are*still fundamental to both weather forecasting and climate studies.

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U.A.S. Shanwell was latterly run by the Met. Office rather than the RAF: although the latter once had a network of sixteen stations, it was reduced to twelve a few years ago. Shanwell closed in March 1992, with the 6-hourly operational routine being transferred to Boulmer the next day. Having seen the connectivity diagrams in the communications suite at Dundee Group HQ bunker (Craigiebarns), Shanwell UAS was linked into the UKWMO network, alongside ROC posts and master posts, radar stations, and the Caledonian bunker at Barnton Quarry. Meantime, the buildings at Shanwell are still in place, but all of them have suffered at the hands of the Tayport locals – brick built, with flat roofs and Crittall steel-framed windows, the architecture is reminiscent of military bases elsewhere in Scotland from the 1940’s and ‘50’s.

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Until the 1990’s the UK High Resolution radiosonde station network of “upper air stations” consisted of about 17 stations, some of which are not operational anymore: Albemarle, Aughton, Beaufort Park, Boulmer, Camborne, Castor Bay, Crawley, Dunkeswell, Eskdalemuir, Hemsby, Herstmonceux, Hillsborough, Lerwick, Shanwell, Stornoway, Watnall, and Woodvale. They gathered data including vertical profiles of temperature, dew-point temperature, wind speed and wind direction - from the surface to altitudes of 20-30 km in the troposphere and lower stratosphere. Today, the Met Office maintains six upper-air stations, at Lerwick, Albermarle (Northumberland), Watnall (Nottinghamshire), Herstmonceux (East Sussex), Camborne (Cornwall) and Castor Bay (Northern Ireland). Camborne and Lerwick are manned sites and the remaining four are fully automatic (autosonde).

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I remember poking around the place around 1995-ish, and it was still fairly intact, with only the odd pane of glass smashed. Since then, the neds have used Shanwell as a practice pad for graffiti - but apart from odd Leonardo, it's mostly manga-style skinny kids with giant trainers, ganja leaves, plus giant knobs. The universal language of spraycan art. The radiosonde balloon shed - looks OK outside, but is full of birdshit inside. There are still signs warning about explosive gases – they used hydrogen rather than helium for the radiosonde balloons, since its less dense, so provides more lift – the only trouble is that it causes Hindenburg disasters, since it’s highly inflammable, whereas helium only causes voices to become like Mickey Mouse's. Now, the rest of the buildings are pretty trashed, and the battery house has the remains of nasty leaky Alcad cells, furring up with acid.

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Shot on Velvia 100F and cross-processed …

Erstlaub
27-08-2009, 09:52 PM
Luscious pics and thorough history, nice one man.

foz101
27-08-2009, 11:02 PM
I thought my monitor was fucked for a minute, but you've been back with funny film. As trashed as it ever was I see. The balloon/gas building must be pretty full of pigeon poo by now?

I don't remember reading about the UKWMO link before either, interesting.

wolfism
28-08-2009, 08:33 AM
Cheers both - yep, this was an experiment with expired film - the Velvia glows but the reds go crazy.

Foz - there's less pigeon crap in it than I remember; maybe someone's harvesting it? ;)

boxfrenzy
28-08-2009, 10:11 AM
Nice work there, and the whole expired film thing makes this very nice ondeed. Jolly good. :thumb

skin
28-08-2009, 11:46 AM
No bad at all - does that film make "artificial sunlight" look