re: an indicator that UK Met order for WVSS-II is advancingIf LoganAir G-SAJF is going to be installed with AFIRS Edge and the WVSS-II sensor for weather data collection, it is a great choice. It flies up to eight trips per day in the UK and could provide data on the way up and data on the way down for each trip as well as data point-to-point.
This link should show a table of flights made by G-SAJF dating back to July 9th (about a week ago).
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/g-sajf The flights average about an hour long, sometime between 6:30 AM and 9:30 PM.
Dublin in Ireland and Esbjerg in Denmark are airports outside the UK. Both had one flight each from and to Aberdeen, Scotland last week. These flights would also provide data of interest to the UK Meteorological Office since they are over weather-affecting bodies of water adjacent to the UK. Flights into Europe, especially deep into Europe, are probably of less value and interest.
The UK Met order is believed to be for 30 installations of the Edge and the WVSS-II with SaaS revenue for a period of time on top. While the solid state Edge should last a long while, I would think that a water vapour sensor component or two might need routine replacement to maintain accuracy.
The ECCC in Canada began working with the Tamdar sensor back in 2019. A contract was extended, but no word for a while about these. That effort predates the acquisition of the WVSS-II sensor from SpectraSensors so Canada may be waiting to see how the UK installations work out, perhaps before buying into both sensors.
The Tamdar sensor had already been deployed around the world to some extent by developer Airdat before the product was acquired by Panasonic. FLYHT's acquisition of it occurred in 2018 when I believe Panasonic was working out some internal issues in their company. The acquisition was cash neutral for FLYHT (i.e. Panasonic more or less paid FLYHT to give it a soft landing).
Tamdar has always been well regarded by the weather research community, as has the WVSS-II.