• Turn texts on
• Turn them off
• Set which days of the week you get texts
• Set which times of day you get them (set a start time and a stop time)
• Suspend them for the rest of today (they start again automatically tomorrow)
• Suspend them till a future date (say if you go off on holiday)

• Viewing its web page on our website
• Asking the site to send you a text or email

• Dales Member? Text in Dales weather? - and it'll tell you which Dales sites are working, and what it's blowing on them.
• Long Mynd member? Text in LMSC weather?, and you will check your sites in one easy report.
• DSC Member? Text in DSC Weather?, and you will get which DSC sites are working
• Southern Club? send SHGC Weather?
• Pennine Member? send Pennine Weather?
• Peak Member? send Peak weather?

• Southern Club
• Wessex Club
• Avon Club
• Thames Valley Club
• Peak Soaring Association
• Long Mynd Club
• Derbyshire Soaring Club
• North Wales HG & PG Club
• Pennine Club
• Dales HG & PG Club
• Northumbria Club

• The League, the BP Cup or other competitions.
• A School could set up its own Group to send messages out to the pupils as to whether it's "on" for today.
• BHPA officers
• XC Enthusiasts
• A Group of 6 mates all fly together and drink in the same pub!

• Making sure people know there is a meeting on tonight.
• Arranging a retrieve if you land out, and maybe someone else is nearby.
• Emergencies, such as an injured pilot getting help.
• Making sure more than one of you turns up to fly - so it's safe.

• Turn messages off permanently, or turn them back on again
• Set what days of the week you want messages to be sent to you
• Set what times of day they will be sent (you set a Start and Stop Time)
• Suspend messages for the rest of today, (they'll start again automatically tomorrow)
• Suspend them till a future date (useful when you will be busy next week, or off on holiday)
• Cancel the suspension at any time, and turn messages back on.

I don't think, for 8p-10p a day, (which is the cost of a Wendy subscription) we can afford to pay for your texts, too.... Come on!!

Your Wendy subscription covers the costs of erecting and maintaining the weather stations - and the website. There's nothing left out of that fund to supply free texts! Yes, I know many people get free texts with a mobile account - but they usually pay a minimum of £20-£25 a month for that! Pay Wendy £25 a month, and we'll give you free texts!

The Difference between Passive Data and Active ("Push") Data
In the past, Wendy was passive - she was available, but YOU contacted HER at YOUR expense. You rang up. And unless you have a call package, a call from BT to Wendy is around 10-12p. It's around 30p if you are on Pay-As-You-Go mobile. You didn't pay that money to Wendy, you paid it to the phone company.

Now, Wendy has to push the data out to you, by text. Active, not passive, you see.

That costs money. We have to pay a monthly fee to the network for a connection to our website, and then it costs us around 8p a text to send them out, as we pay for priority routeing. It would be cheaper for secondary routeing, but it's not reliable - it's no use getting a vital weather text an hour or two late, is it? And on secondary routeing it can take this long.

Most Wendy texts, (because we pay for priority) arrive in SECONDS.  The slowest I've experienced so far is a couple of minutes, but that's rare.  Usually the text from Wendy arrives BEFORE the Delivery Report from my request text TO Wendy!

It's Like Pay-As-You-Go...

Basically, you have a Wendy Text Account, and you top it up when it runs low. Many Wendy users already have a Text Account, because they use the automatic Alert system, where Wendy notifies you if good winds occur at a site you have booked.  We can send you a text that your credit is running low, and top it up for you automatically. Basic top-up is £12 for 100 texts, although we will be giving some free texts out to kick the service off, so you can try it for nothing. You can pay as little as 8p per text, depending on how many you top up with. Go to Change Your Details when you log in to see the rates in detail.

So basically, you pay for text delivery like you used to pay for the phone call - the only difference is you pay Wendy for sending them, and we pay the phone company. Before, you paid the phone company direct to get the Wendy data..

Before you complain that it's expensive (I KNOW how proverbially tight some pilots are!) I think it's a pretty good deal. For many people,it will cost no more than ringing Wendy did. And even if you had a call package, and didn't pay for each call, to get a message for 10p or so that can save you two hours of driving and £30 in petrol has got to be good value! £30 in wasted petrol or diesel if it's not flyable when you get there pays for an AWFUL lot of texts. Three Hundred, to be precise!

Yes, I know you haven't paid for it before in this way, but it'll be so useful that I think you'll quickly see that it's a sensible use of money. And it will still be damn cheap!

It May Get Cheaper If It's Popular...

The text costs at the moment reflect the fact that we don't as yet use many - but if the service takes off, as I hope it will, then we may be buying much bigger quantities from the networks.   If that happens, I can probably screw them down quite a bit - and pass that reduction on to you. As I said, Wendy doesn't seek to make money on the delivery, just cover costs. If you all use it a lot, it'll get cheaper!

Yes, if you are at work, and have a computer available, it would be more convenient (and cheaper) to have Wendy messages arrive by email, wouldn't it? You can specify whether delivery is to be by email, or text, or both. Like many other websites, when there is a message for you, Wendy will email you about it, and there will be a login link in the email. Click the link to read the message.

To prevent abuse of the messaging system, we will never ACCEPT incoming messages by email - people will only be able to send messages from our website, (where you must be logged in) or by text, where we know who you are from your number. That way we can stamp on anyone who sends abusive or nuisance messages.  Email can be sent anonymously, or from a spoofed address, so that's why we won't allow email input to the system.  Cuts out the garbage and trolls.

Pay-By-The-Call (Premium-Rate) Phone Service To Go

We have had, for many years, a number whereby non-subscribers could call at 50p/minute and get the weather data.

This is going, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, our new low-rate subscription (as little as £2.50/month) means that calling more than once a week to this service is now more expensive for the user than being a member.

Secondly, Wendy is moving on technically - and members will now get specific information for EACH FLYING SITE! Not just the data from the nearest Wendy weather station. The old premium-rate phone service can't really cope with this.

Thirdly, premium-rate phone calls are a very old-fashioned way of contacting Wendy; the costs of hosting such a service have gone up quite a lot, and the traffic has gone down, so it's no longer economic to provide this service.

You Won't Phone the Stations Direct In Future

When the textback service kicks off, I anticipate phone-the-stations access will dwindle right off.

People phoning the stations direct is getting in the way of improvements to the service as a whole. The problem is that, if loads of people phone the station as well, WE CAN'T GET ACCESS TO IT TO GET THE DATA FOR THE WEBSITE! We have to wait until the station isn't busy - which can be a long time on a good day.

If you guys all stop phoning the stations, we can interrogate them 3 times as often, and get the data up to the website every 10 minutes instead of every half hour.

Eventually, I'm going to replace the current hardware with cellphone-network data-modem equipment on the hilltop which will dump data direct to the website every minute or two - along with webcam images. That equipment won't HAVE a phone service attached, so you won't be able to ring it.

Having phone lines on the stations is the cause of many of the faults that occur (especially in summer when it's flyable - lightning hits the phone lines and fries the electronics, or puts the phone line out of action).  At the moment, the data is radioed off the hill to a nearby place where there is power and phone line, and our office computer rings each station regularly to get the data, and then loads it up to the website.

Getting rid of the phone lines will make the stations MUCH more reliable in summer. And in winter, too - Wendy stations are all out on the country, where those long miles of poles-and-overhead wires get a battering from gales, and the phone line often goes intermittent, or downright faulty as a result. Cellphone network data-transfer will be much more reliable.

Improved Phone Service - No Password Needed!

Common Questions About The Central Phone Service:

No, you don't. Wendy knows who you are from the phone number you call from. It will only accept calls from current subscribers.

No, the phone server won't let you in if the number is Withheld. It can't know who's calling. You can release your number for just this call by adding 1470 to the front of the Wendy number. In other words, you would dial 1470-0114-287-4464 to get the service. Or use your mobile (no one seems to Bar those).

Two. Typically your home number, and mobile number. (Thats the numbers we store for all Wendy subscribers)

Sorry, No. For two reasons: Firstly, Wendy uses Caller ID to recognise who you are. Many companies hide the number on outgoing calls, or just present the switchboard number, not the "real" number the call came from. Because of this, we can't identify the caller on most Work numbers. Also, we only have the storage capability for two numbers per person on the system. You could leave your Work number on the system, but then it won't work from your Home number - and it may not work from Work anyway, if it goes through a switchboard.

You can register it with Wendy INSTEAD of your personal mobile, but, for technical reasons you can only have ONE mobile number stored. Your other number is your home landline, if you have one.  You can have one landline AND one mobile.

You can't!   Look, how do you think we pay for the erection and maintenance of the stations, the phone lines, and the website, and all the rest of it?

It comes from all the pilots who pay their subscriptions.

If you (and your pal who freeloads on your subscription) cheat the system, we have that much less to invest in the service.

I'm not going to rant on a lot, but I can tell you that Wendy isn't a money-making business - we have to do other things for a living. It's a LOT of hard work and travelling to keep it all going.

Sharing the information with someone else cheats all the other people who stick their hands in their pockets and support what we do.

People sharing a subscription with someone means that we have far less money to put into the service, to the benefit of all.

Wendy is CHEAP!

£2.50 a month - (that's 8p a day!!!) - a pint of beer a month, or, to put it another way, around a TENTH the cost of a mobile phone account. If you maintain you can't afford it, you can't afford to go flying! Don't be tight!

If you always go out together, then it's not a problem, is it? Have one account and use one phone to get site weather messages.

If one of you is at work, and the other wants to go out flying, then you can change the designated mobile on your account for the day. (It's easy to do this on the website).

If this is too much hassle, if you both want independent access, because you go flying independently a lot, then BOTH of you join, please, and get your own individual account. After all - it's £2.50 a month. A ridiculously small sum. It's NOTHING. You pay ten times as much per month for your mobile, typically. (£25 a month is a typical mobile bill -Wendy is 1/10 of that).

After all, if you each have your own mobile, the phone company doesn't give you two numbers and two call allowances for the same monthly payment as ONE phone, does it? Nope, you have to pay for each phone. So why should Wendy give you two lots of access for one payment?

I'd love to hear you justify how you can't afford 8p a day!  Each. Come on, get out your credit card!

The New Android Mobile App

Everything you can do by text, you can also do for FREE with the new Wendy Android app - if you have enough signal.

Android Phone Installation Instructions

In Menu->Settings->Applications, check the tickbox 'Unknown Sources' to allow installation from non-Market sources.

In the phone web browser visit the url

http://www.wendywindblows.com/mobile/download/WendyWindblowsApp.apk

(To save typing it out, you can scan the following QRCode using BarcodeScanner or similar app)

Rod Buck