Cossack Ranger II – A High Quality, Versatile and Affordable 3-Component Short-Period Seismograph

Abstract

Modern, high quality seismic instrumentation has become very expensive and likewise high costs for fast data transfer from outlying stations to the local analysis center. National network operations are normally a government responsibility including the national tasks of monitoring earthquake activities and advising local authorities on earthquake hazards. Originally, seismographs were developed, deployed and operated by Academia but as stated now such tasks rest with government agencies with very few exceptions. Scientists in geoscience departments would often like to operate their own networks for special research experiments but this is hardly feasible due to the high costs involved. When faced with such problems our 'solution' was to develop a low cost, high quality 3-component short period seismograph with a price tag between $1,000 and $1,800. Operational costs were minimized through an outreach project named SeiSchool aimed at cooperation with local high schools. The latter have permanent access to the Internet so data transfer to the Hub in Institute was free. Some schools even installed their own seismographs locally with only written instructions at hand. Station operations were mostly trouble free and in the most successful schools the Cossack Ranger was in continuous operations for more than a year. In this article we describe in details our Cossack Ranger II seismograph, operational aspects, school cooperation and the use of recordings in research ventures.