It's like catching fish. All you really need is a hook, some fishing line, a pole and some bait. But you know if you want to increase your odds of catching fish, you're going to invest in better gear - like specialized lures, rods and reels, and perhaps a boat with a sonar system to track fish below the surface.
The same goes for storm chasing. All you need to chase tornadoes is a reliable vehicle. But the expert storm chasers often spend thousands of dollars in specialized gear to help them find tornadoes more easily and more successfully, and to document what they find.
Robert Fritchie is as prepared for anything that could happen during a chase. Here is the special equipment Robert keeps in his Pontiac Aztec at all times, even when he's not chasing:
- 4 to 8 Blankets
- Two Handheld Spotlights (1 cordless, 1 coreded)
- 2 to 10 Gallons of Drinking Water
- Basic Life Support Medical Kit
- 6 Cervical Spine Collars (Sizes Range from Pediatric to Adult)
- Fire Extinguisher
- Front and Rear Mounted LED Strobes for Accident Scenes or Extreme Low Visibility Situations
- 2-meter Radio
- SG2000 Super Gain HAM Antenna
- Wilson Cellular Antenna
- Window-Mount Scanner Antenna
- Dashboard Camera Mount (Bogen Pistol-Grip)
- Center-Console Mounted 14" LCD Screen
- Toolbox
- Ratchet Set
- Brush Gloves
- 350 Watt DC-to-AC Inverter
- GPS Antenna Mounted on Roof
- XM Satellite Antenna Mounted on Roof
- Slow-Response Thermistor and Relative Humidity Sensor Mounted on Roof Inside an Aspirated Water-Resistant Enclosure
- Full-Sized Spare Tire
Plus, when Robert's actually chasing storms, he adds all this other gear to his vehicle:
Laptop Computer Additional USB GPS Antenna Canon 5D Digital SLR Camera Panasonic PV-DV600 Camcorder Several Tripods (Gittos and Bogen) 300 Channel Scanner Backup Paper County Maps of Chase Area XM Weather Data Receiver and Software GPS Tracking Software Hail Documentation Kit (with rulers, hacksaw, backdrops, baseball, golfball, softball, etc.) Rain-X!!!
