Bare Gear Necessities For The Upcoming Season

[Charlie Linsz]

As we get a bit closer to full-on chase season, especially in the south, I've begun making some small upgrades to the roof setup for my chase vehicle. These include a new roof deck, PVC forward-biased tripod (for inspeed anemometer) and a dedicated area in the rear of the deck to take off and land a DJI Mini 3 Drone. I got to thinking about the season and what new gear I could buy, especially considering that I have acquired a job, (I'm 16) and quickly fell down the rabbit hole that is radio gear, meteorological instruments, cameras and of course much more. This time last year I was daily driving a chromebook, which proved a horrific experience for any decent applications, so started using an older windows laptop. This laptop opened the door to liking technology a whole lot more than I already did, and I now believe I need a good laptop car mount.

All of that to say, what do you guys consider to be the most necessary when it comes to entry level gear? This will be my 2nd full year chasing, but I did do quite a lot of it on a local basis (upstate SC) last season.

Here is a list of the gear I already have and use

• iPhone 16 base model​
• DJI Mini 3​
• Inspeed pole-mount anemometer (more on this later)​
• New windows 11 laptop with radar software (supercell wx)​
• Very old android tablet for radarscope (also have radarscope tier 2 on my phone)​
• 2008 Sony handicam​
• Akaso brave 4 action camera (for timelapses and waterproof scenarios)​
• 2008 Honda Pilot (with added navigation screen *carplay*)​
• Midland WR120 WX radio​
• 2 Tripods​
• DJI Osmo mobile (phone gimbal)​
• Homemade roof deck for standing and tripods​
• Homemade 1" PVC forward biased tripod mount for anemometer​
• Acurite Iris 5-in-1 weather station (Mobile mesonet)​

More on the anemometer mount, I made a wooden mount for this anemometer in the latter part of last year, and named it the quad-pod for its 4-leg structure. This mount totaled 42 inches high outside of the roof deck, leading to a very high overall profile for the vehicle. As ridged as this mount was, it was too tall, and not simple to shorten, so I started over. The mount you see pictured is made from 1 inch PVC. The front-facing brace has a slight lean to it, probably about 30-35 degrees from vertical. It attaches to the roof deck via 3/8ths inch U-bolts that clamp down on the pipes. Initial testing has proven the mount can easily do about 80 mph on the highway so no issues there. The height of this mount is about 32 inches from the surface of the roof deck and about 36 inches above the roofline of the car. In all of my research, this was the sweet-spot in regards to escaping the Bernoulli effect while maintaining reasonable rigidity.