WESD Wind Energy Science Discussions WESD Wind Energ. Sci. Discuss. 2366-7621 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/wes-2019-81 Flying UltraSonic – A new way to measure the wind Hofsäß Martin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0607-6589 1 Bergmann Dominique 2 Denzel Jan 2 Cheng Po Wen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3764-3363 1 Stuttgart Wind Energy @ Insitute of Aircraft Design (SWE), University of Stuttgart, Allmandring 5b, 70569 Stuttgart Germany Insitute of Aircraft Design (IFB), University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 31, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie 0325519 12 11 2019 2019 1 21 Copyright: © 2019 Martin Hofsäß et al. 2019 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://wes.copernicus.org/preprints/wes-2019-81/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://wes.copernicus.org/preprints/wes-2019-81/wes-2019-81.pdf

<p>Measurements of flow conditions at complex sites that are difficult to install a met mast are expensive and can only be carried out with great effort. Concepts and new measuring methods are needed to evaluate these sites. This article presents an experiment in which an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), more precisely a helicopter, was equipped with a standard 3-D ultrasonic anemometer. This UAV was positioned closed to a meteorological measuring mast and remained stationary at a constant altitude to measure the wind speed components. The data of the UAV were compared with the measurements of an ultrasonic sensor installed on the met mast. The measurements shows a deviation of 0.1&thinsp;m/s for the horizontal speed. A comparison of the PSDs shows a very good agreement.</p>