Blog from September, 2021

Yesterday activities

On Tues, 9/28, Blackswift operated their UAV from about 9:45 to 10:15.  At the end of this, Bill (and I) launched a sonde.  After everyone left, I (and Terry!) lowered the tower (10:40–11:00).

The UAV flew one repetition of a "square wave" pattern, with long legs N-S at altitude of 27, 67, and 107m AGL, with 0 AGL on the ground at the base of our tower.

As far as we know, this is the last of the UAV flights this year.


tt is down

The tt DSM went down last night right before 11 PM local, and it has not come back.  The radio ttstation has been up the whole time, so this does not appear to be related to spol.  I'll try to get out there this morning to look at it.


It's been a while.

Check time series since 3 August.

  • NCharts and DSM Dashboard are running.
  • Ignore data gaps - issue has been identified (refer to August blog posts). 


  • TRH - ok
  • P - ok
  • Pirga 
    • Pirga.7m is offset from P.7m by +6mb (Pirga higher).
    • Pirga.27m measures too high. Pirga.27m > Pirga.17m.
  • Tirga
    • Tmote measures wildly divergent values compared to all T measurements
  • Radiometer - ok
    • QC Note: 3 spikes 03:32:30 5 Aug, 05:42:30 15 Aug, 04:02:30 27 Aug)
    • Rpile.in [-150, -25], Rpile.out [-70, 125] W/m2
    • Rsw.in [-7, 1200], Rsw.out [-1, 240] W/m2
    • Tcase - ok
    • Wetness - spikes at time where there was no rain ??, i.e. > 1 Sept
  • Soils
    • Gsoil - ok [-30, 55]W/m2 
    • Lamdasoil  
      • QC Note - Spike at 03:37:30 28 Aug.
    • Qsoil - ok
    • Tau63 - ok 
      • QC Note - Spike at 05:02:30 29 Aug.
    • Tsoil - As Steve noted - all data are bad. 
  • Sonic - ok 
  • co2/h2o
    • Persistent bias: co2.7m > co2.27m > co2.17m 
    • QC Notes
      • co2 at all levels and h2o.17m bad 18:17:30 3 Aug - 18:17:30 4 Aug
      • h2o.27m spikes 16, 26 Aug, 4, 8 Sept 
      • co2.27m spikes
    • Tcase - ok (2 spikes)
  • Batteries
    • QC Note: Bad 10 Aug
    • Vheat - ok
    • Vbatt - ok
    • Vcharge - ~27.9 V
    • Vpile_Off, Vpile_On - ok
    • iload - ok. [1.6 - 2.2] A
    • icharge - ok. [-.2 to 0.1] A
    • l3mote - ok. ~ 50 mA (minus spikes).
    • lmote - ok ~15 mA (minus spikes).
    • Rfan - ok [5400 - 5650] rpm









Sensor outages

Just to record this:

  • Since 28 Aug, the wetness sensor has read "0" about half the time.  I suspect a cable issue.
  • Since 28 July(!), all Tsoils have started reading negative 273 from time to time.  Now a month later, almost no readings are good.  Is this a lightning-related failure of the reference resistor?