Weather: Overcast morning with scattered cumulonimbus throughout the afternoon. No precipitation today but plenty of sunshine.
Over the past couple of days:
- Built 10m Upper Convergence Tower utilizing double screw anchors at each guy point
- Acquired remaining three 1 ton concrete blocks to use as guy anchor points(bringing the total to 6)
- Dug recessions at final positions to reduce cross section of blocks visible to instrumentation
- Rigged blocks with wire rope eye & eye slings to use as rated mount point for 20m tower guy wires
- Installed first section of both 20m towers and the six rigged blocks in their final positions
The anchor issue is now resolved, tomorrow we will resume building Lower Convergence Tower.
Weather: Rain in the morning followed by a mostly cloudy afternoon. The cold front moving through has been a fantastic reprieve from the heat.
On Tuesday we installed and performed a pull test on the standard and auger screw anchors in various configurations. All failed the 20 meter tower test by pulling out of the soil under the required force threshold specified by the manufacturer. We are unable to drive the anchors deeper due to drainage tiles throughout both the fields and swale.
We settled on sourcing one ton 2'x2'x3' concrete blocks to use as anchor points for the guy wires of the 20 meter towers. Ken(the landowner) has been extremely accommodation, letting us use both his trailer and backhoe to move them. Tomorrow we plan on installing blocks at the anchor locations for both 20m towers. After this, install will proceed as planned.
Originally posted by Dan, reposted as a blog.
Weather: Rain in the morning followed by a mostly cloudy afternoon. The cold front moving through has been a fantastic reprieve from the heat.
On Tuesday we installed and performed a pull test on the standard and auger screw anchors in various configurations. All failed the 20 meter tower test by pulling out of the soil under the required force threshold specified by the manufacturer. We are unable to drive the anchors deeper due to drainage tiles throughout both the fields and swale.
We settled on sourcing one ton 2'x2'x3' concrete blocks to use as anchor points for the guy wires of the 20 meter towers. Ken(the landowner) has been extremely accommodation, letting us use both his trailer and backhoe to move them. Tomorrow we plan on installing blocks at the anchor locations for both 20m towers. After this, install will proceed as planned.
Arrived in Champaign yesterday evening after an uneventful drive.
Weather: Hot & Humid...and HOT. Clear morning with scattered cumulus in the afternoon.
Met with the landowner to discuss power and trailer placement. ISFS Base arrived mid-morning and is parked in the north driveway. We are going to hold off on fully deploying it until its location for Ops is finalized, hopefully in the next week.Truck driver had trouble navigating to Scattered Acres Farm(landowner's home and equipment storage, as well as ISFS and ISS trailer locations). If anyone else has this problem with the given address use these coordinates:
Scattered Acres Farm: 40.226278, -88.461237
Spent the remainder of the day staging infrastructure at respective sites.
Just set the motes:
id=1 (soils+nr01); id=2 (nr01)
gpsOFF (since some had been turned on during GRAINEX)
fsOFF (since some had been turned on during GRAINEX)
sp=12 (GRAINEX had power reporting every 25s, which seems excessive – this produces every 60s)
pp=0 (had to hit the white switch twice to talk to the mote at all, but this should set this forever)
eeupdate (to save all of these settings)
I used mode IDs:
| DSM | Port | MoteSN | ID |
|---|---|---|---|
| rel1 | 7 | 31 | 1 |
| rel1 | 5 | 32 | 2 |
| relt | 5 | 39 | 2 |
| lconv1 | 7 | 21 | 1 |
| lconv1 | 5 | 20 | 2 |
| lconvt | 5 | 29 | 2 |