The Kestrel Meter is no stranger to the big screen, in fact, at 17 years old it has already starred in 2 big movies with one on the way.

The Kestrel first made an appearance in the action film, “Shooter”, starring Mark Walberg. In the movie, Walberg plays a top Marine sniper who previously abandoned the military. With an all-star cast, the 2007 movie received great reviews. It was exciting for the Kestrel team at NK to see the Kestrel 3000 in action. The Kestrel 3000 is a hand-held, waterproof weather meter that measures wind speed, temperature, relative humidity, heat stress index and dew point. Kestrel Weather Meters are often used off-screen by many competitive shooters and snipers in the military because of its extreme accuracy and ruggedness.  In fact, next month, Kestrel is releasing a brand new Shooter’s Weather Meter with Applied Ballistics software. If there is ever a sequel to this movie, maybe the newest addition to the Kestrel Ballistics Weather Meter Line will have a chance at fame. For more information about the Kestrel Shooter’s Weather Meter with Applied Ballistics, visit the product page.

In 2008, the movie, “A Journey to the Center of the Earth” was released. The movie featured a Kestrel 2500 which measures temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure and altitude. For those familiar with the movie, the Kestrel 2500 made its debut when Trevor Anderson asks Hannah Ásgeirsson the temperature.

With an anticipated release date of January 2014, the Kestrel is expected to make another appearance in the highly anticipated action movie, Ten, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this movie, Schwarzenegger’s character will be training someone on how to  shoot and will be using the Kestrel Shooter’s Weather Meter with Horus Ballistics as a tool. We are looking forward to next winter to see if Kestrel Shooter’s Weather Meter made the director’s final cut!

The weather is breaking, the winds are finally subsiding and the hot air ballooning season has come into full swing. To many of us on the ground, ballooning may appear as simple as heating the air in the balloon, taking off and then landing somewhere safe – hopefully. However, ballooning enthusiasts must take into account many different factors before lighting the flame and taking off into the wild blue yonder. And many of those factors can be easily determined if they have a Kestrel 2500 Pocket Weather Meter at the ready.

Wind speed is one of the most important things to consider in ballooning, and the Kestrel 2500 provides pilots with accurate readings of how fast the wind is blowing at ground level, which could cancel a flight entirely. Temperature can also affect how long it takes for the balloon to fully expand or how much flame it takes to get the air hot, which also determines how much fuel is used. With the Kestrel 2500 in hand, pilots can get an accurate temperature reading and manage their fuel consumption. Altitude is also very important considering hot air balloons can climb to about 12,000 ft before passengers need oxygen. Thanks to the Kestrel 2500, pilots can get an accurate altitude measurement based on the barometric pressure reading of the unit.

The Kestrel 2500 has many uses and can help determine environmental conditions in a number of different ways, but for the hot air balloon enthusiast, it’s an essential tool. The next time you go to a hot air balloon race or take a hot air balloon ride, look around and you’ll probably see several pilots using their Kestrel meters to obtain their pre-flight readings. And if not, you could always show them how easy it is to use your Kestrel meter!

As many of you know, Kestrel (the weather side of NK) partnered up with the Korey Stringer Institute, a few years back. The Korey Stringer Institute or KSI is a non-profit organization that provides education on preventing sudden death in sport. KSI has been at the University of Connecticut for about 3 years then and since that time, they have made big strides to get the word out about protecting athletes from heat stroke and illness and they are doing one heck of a job! In the past 3 years, they now have helped 9 states adopt heat-acclimatization guidelines that will help decrease the number of players affected by heat illness each year. Their long-term plan is to tackle all 50 states and the more awareness and support they can generate, the better.

This past Tuesday evening, KSI hosted an extremely successful fundraising event (completely sold out!) in New York City to raise money for research in a very fun and modern restaurant, Slate. They had support of current and past NFL players, many of their sponsors,  friends and family of Doug Casa (COO at KSI) and his staff, it was quite the party. Kestrel’s Director of Sales, Katie Godfrey, Director of Engineering, Michael Naughton, Kestrel Account Manager, Tommy Loomis and Advertising & PR Manager, Meg Keating made a day trip up to NYC for the big event.

There was a silent auction with some really cool items to bid on, including tickets to the Superbowl and most importantly, a Kestrel 4400 Heat Stress Tracker among several autographed football helmets by various players.

After cocktail hour, several people who knew Korey Stringer took turns sharing kind words him and the Institute founded in his name. Speakers included, past and current NFL players, Korey Stringer’s wife (for more about Korey Stringer, see this blog), Korey’s agent and Doug Casa. Everyone had wonderful things to say about the former NFL player and though his passing was unfortunate, it has raised so much awareness to prevent this from happening in the future.

Doug Casa’s speech was particularly moving as he told his amazing story about how heat stroke had affected him. In the 1980′s, Doug was running in a track meet and with only 200 meters to go, he collapsed in the heat. He got up and tried again and collapsed 50 meters before the finish line. Lucky for Doug , there was an athletic trainer on site, who knew how important it was to take certain preventative measures to ensure he would live. After spending time in the hospital, Doug finally recovered. He never had a chance to meet the athletic trainer who had saved his life, until one day, 16 years later he was giving a talk on heat stress at a conference. While he was telling his story, a member of the audience left the room. As it turns out, after Doug’s talk, that the person who had left had gone to another area of the conference because they knew the person who saved Doug and he too was at the conference! Doug then had a chance to meet the amazing man who had saved his life over a decade later. Since that time, Doug and the athletic trainer have remained great friends and as a surprise to all of the guests the KSI event, Doug invited the gentleman to come up during his talk.  As you can imagine, the attendees broke out in applause for the man who saved Doug’s life. It was a great way to wrap up the evening and really reinforced how powerful the mission statement of the Korey Stringer Institute is, “To provide first-rate information, resources, assistance, and advocacy for the promotion of prevention of sudden death in sport via health and safety initiatives”.

The beginning of April kicked off with our Second Annual Kestrel Dealer Summit. As with last year, the dealers that attended were from all over: Asia, Canada, Germany, Australia and within the United States. The Kestrel team was extremely excited to welcome them upon arrival. We hosted a Welcome Reception at a local restaurant, The Concordville Inn, and had a great time catching up with dealers we’ve known for years as well as getting to know some newer dealers a little better.

The next morning started with NK CEO, Alix James, explaining NK’s growth strategy for dealers explaining how the Sales & Engineering team takes the ideas from our customers and dealers and make sure they are evaluated and potentially included in our project timeline.

Next, dealers spent some time with each of their account managers discussing goals for the year and putting a plan in place on how to achieve those goals. The afternoon of the first day was very exciting, Kestrel invited Doug Casa from our partner organization, the Korey Stringer Institute (KSI) to educate our dealers about heat stress and preventing death in athletes.  Doug and his team at KSI use and recommend the Kestrel 4400 Heat Stress Tracker to measure heat stress. The product measures heat index, temperature, relative humidity and wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT).  In addition it also serves as a data logger and enables users to set customizable warning zones to alert athletic trainers when conditions are too hot for players to continue practicing. It was very helpful for dealers to hear Doug speak and hear about use scenarios.

After Doug Casa’s presentation on, Kestrel’s very own Doug Hall presented on the features and functionality of our newest product in the Heat Stress line, the Kestrel 4600 which measures 15 plus environmental readings and has a built-in digital compass. Doug took the dealers outside to set up the 4600s on tripods where they observed and took some of their own readings.

For the next section, NK’s Tommy Loomis and Chris Rance covered the Ballistics Weather Meter Line which includes the familiar, Kestrel Shooter’s Weather Meter with Horus Ballistics and the not yet released, Kestrel Shooter’s Weather Meter with Applied Ballistics. Tommy covered the markets who primarily use this product, which includes military, competitive shooters and hunters while Chris explained the technical data input that enables the product to provide an accurate shooting solution.

The final day of the summit dealers had a chance to meet the marketing team and learn about ways they can utilize NK’s resources to market Kestrel products effectively. The day wrapped up with an afternoon session with Director of Engineering, Michael Naughton discussing new products on the horizon for NK.

If you were unable to make the dealer summit, we will be posting video in the next few weeks! Also, if there are particular topics that you’d like to hear more about, please email us at kestrelweathermeters(at)nkhome(dot)com.

Each Friday morning, the Sales & Marketing department at Nielsen-Kellerman hosts a “Joe Friday”. This is an event that all of NK’s coffee lovers look forward to all week! A different person each week signs up to be “Joe Friday” and stops at one of the teams favorite places, Dunkin’ Donuts, and picks up some hot coffee and an assortment of donuts. Definitely a nice way to wrap up the week!

I think when the weather finally starts to cooperate and admit that it is spring outside, we may have to incorporate a Water ice Wednesday from Rita’s! We’ll see though, right now it’s snowing outside and our Kestrel is reading 37 degrees!

What types of things do you do in your office during the week? Please write in and let us know, we’d love to hear!

While there are so many fun perks to working at NK, one that we don’t always talk about are the trips we take to become better educated in the markets we serve. What many NK & Kestrel customers may not realize is that Nielsen-Kellerman manufactures three product lines, NK Sports Performance & Electronics, Kestrel Weather & Environmental Meters and Blue Ocean Rugged Audio. What does this mean for the NK Sales & Marketing Team? It means we are constantly learning and get to meet a lot of interesting individuals who are using our products. We spend any given week working on projects that relate to anything from the rowing market to the hunting & shooting marketing to firefighting to the athletic training market.

Last month, the team had the chance to take a very interesting and unique trip down to a little town called Canadian, Texas.  Yes, Canadian, Texas, I didn’t believe that it actually existed either. Anyhow, Canadian sits on the Pan Handle of Texas in a part that is much colder than say, Dallas.  The temperatures tend to be lower but they don’t experience too much snow, that is until the NK team decides to plan a trip there. That’s right the morning we arrived in Canadian, Texas, the town was under a Winter Storm Warning but that wasn’t enough to stop us! We’re from Philly, we’re used to it, although ironically we haven’t seen too much snow this year.

The purpose of our trip was to visit a good friend and partner, Todd Hodnett. Todd works closely training snipers in the military and uses one of our products to do it. Working at NK, it is important to very well-versed in our products, so we went to visit Todd to get our very own customized military sniper training on one of the products in our Kestrel Ballistics Weather Meter Line, the Kestrel Shooter’s Meter with Horus Ballistics. This product is used by long-range and competitive shooters and many military snipers.

If you’re interested in hearing what the pros have to say about it, there is a lot of discussion on a forum called Sniper’s Hide, check it out.

Anyhow, we had a great time down in Canadian, several of us made shots from up to 700 meters away and learned a lot throughout the experience! Sales & Marketing Director, Katie Godfrey had the biggest bragging rights of the group, she hit her target at just over 1200 meters away!

We’d love to hear about your exciting adventures with the Kestrel and we always enjoy seeing photos of the Kestrel products. If you have any photos or stories you’d like to share or have featured on our blog, email us at advertising (at) nkhome (dot) com.

Preventing Battery Leakage and Corrosion

Your Kestrel meter is shipped with two high-quality alkaline AAA batteries. All alkaline batteries are prone to leaking potassium hydroxide, particularly as they near full discharge. As batteries discharge, they release a small amount of hydrogen gas, which exerts pressure inside the battery and may eventually rupture its seals. Once a leak has occurred, the potassium hydroxide and carbon dioxide from the air form potassium carbonate crystals that grow and follow along the metal electrodes to the circuit board, causing oxidation of the circuit and components. Damage caused by leaking batteries is often irreversible, and is NOT covered under the Kestrel warranty. Therefore, it is important to take these steps to reduce the likelihood of a battery leak and resulting corrosion and damage:

• Use US-made, name-brand batteries wherever possible. Do not mix brands of batteries.
• Do not mix batteries of different ages or usage – replace both batteries at the same time with new batteries that have not reached their expiration date.
• Remove batteries for long-term storage (more than one month of non-use). Even when powered down, the Kestrel continues to log data and slowly discharge the batteries.
• To avoid fully discharging your batteries, try to change your batteries when below 20% capacity.
• Inspect your batteries occasionally (at least every three months) and remove immediately if you notice ANY moisture or white crystalline material at either end.
• Always store your Kestrel meter within the specified temperature limits:  -22.0 °F to 140.0 °F | -30.0 °C to 60.0 °C. Be particularly careful not to leave a Kestrel meter with batteries installed inside a hot car in the summer.
• Consider using Lithium AAA cells which are virtually leak proof and provide up to 50% additional capacity in Bluetooth equipped models as well as improved cold weather performance.

If you notice you have a leaking battery, be careful not to touch it with your bare skin or allow it to come in contact with your eyes as the leaking material is very caustic. Remove and dispose of both batteries. If possible, loosen and vacuum out any white powder. DO NOT BLOW INTO THE COMPARTMENT TO REMOVE THE POWDER – it can cause eye or skin damage and will be driven further inside the unit. You may attempt to use a cotton swab moistened with white vinegar to clean the contacts and gently swab out the battery compartment. Do not exert any force against the contacts inside the battery compartment or you may bend or break them. Allow the battery compartment to dry completely and try installing fresh batteries. If your unit powers up – great! If not, you may contract Kestrel Support to inquire about our Customer Loyalty Trade-In Program which provides a generous discount towards a replacement Kestrel meter.