Only visible face at very far right: Roger Van Cauwenbergh
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Background:
In
1975 a contract from the Canadian Atmospheric
Environment Service (AES) was let with Bristol Aerospace
to design and build a
prototype self-powered automatic weather station. It was to be
installed on an ice island in
the Beaufort Sea. The windmill to power the station was built to
withstand winds up to 100
mph. It was produced for about $115,000, and tests showed
it
had high reliability.
Archivist's note (September 2023): This was a plan to utilize windmills to generate electric power that was decades before its time. AES (now MSC) retirees who worked on this project said, "........ while it was able to power the remote weather station, eventually very high arctic winds caused its total destruction". |
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