SPOT and GPRS drifting buoys for HF Radar calibration

Abstract

Traditional drifting buoys have been designed to measure the surface currents at a nominal depth of 15m with drogues of 6m height. Herein, in order to assess the performance of HF Radars two designs of Lagrangian drifting buoys have been developed and targeted to provide the vertically averaged velocity of the currents in the frst 2 and 0.5 meters of the water column. These are the layer heights of the HF Radars of RAIA observatory. The buoys were made with standard materials and of-the-shelf electronics, to keep costs as low as possible.