Here at FTS we occasionally hear from customers who have had fixed RAWS components damaged by vandals, or have had equipment ‘disappear’ from remote sites. One of our Canadian clients recently even had their truck stolen, complete with a datalogger and a selection of sensors.

But one story really caught our attention last week when officials from Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest issued a request to the public to help find some missing equipment. According to local news sources, fire crews arrived at the scene of a planned prescribed burn only to find that their FTS Quick Deploy portable weather station had gone AWOL.

The gear had been loaded onto the vehicle earlier that morning but had mysteriously vanished en route. Reports mentioned that the engine had been left unattended for a short time while stopped at a gas station south of Hamilton, suggesting that it had perhaps been the victim of foul play. A full description of the missing equipment was issued and eager officials hoped that the vital weather monitoring station would be swiftly located.

And indeed it was. Read More...

Tags: Prescribed burning, Bitteroot National Forest, QD portable RAWS, Quick Deploy

As the FTS success story continues to gain momentum, the media maintain interest in our ongoing developments and products. Here, CEO David Illing proudly poses alongside one of our QD3 Quick Deploy portable RAWS for a photographer from Douglas magazine while FTS Marketing Director Eric Embacher assists with the shoot. The business-focused publication will be carrying a feature spread on FTS in their March 2012 issue. Read More...

Tags: QD3, Douglas magazine, business, media, Portable RAWS

Long in the video editing bay, we are pleased to present “A Prescription for Success: On Site Weather Conditions with Portable RAWS”, a 14-minute documentary-style video that explores prescribed burning—the value of it, how it’s done, and of course, the importance of having accurate weather conditions at the site before, during and after the burn.

The footage was filmed this past February, while collaborating with the US Forest Service in the Apalachicola National Forest in Northwestern Florida. For this particular burn they were planning to burn 10,000 acres in 3 days. Read More...

Tags: Portable RAWS, apalachicola national forest, QD3

We know that ease of set-up is an important attribute to our end-users, and we took that as a top priority in the design of the QD3. Let’s take a look at a comparison between the set-up of our QD3, and the competitors’, to really see the difference: Read More...

Tags: QD3, Portable RAWS

After an extensive pre-bid qualification process and comprehensive evaluation of multiple vendors, FTS was awarded a contract to replace the RSFWSU’s existing portable Incident RAWS cache with 50 FTS QD3 Quick Deploy portable RAWS.

These new stations have already seen some action in the Southwestern states, and as the busy fire season approaches, you can expect to see more and more FTS QD3s in the field.

The success of this project delivery wouldn’t have been possible without Larch Fire, a local Boise company, who assisted with final assembly and delivery of our portable stations. We also would like to thank the Wildland Firefighter Foundation for providing the warehouse space for pre-testing prior to the delivery to NIFC, and to show our appreciation, we donated $2,000. We are thankful to everyone who contributed to the NIFC delivery, and we look forward to continuing to develop additional technology to aid the Incident RAWS program. Read More...

Tags: NIFC, QD3, Portable RAWS