Blog from June, 2013

Just to note:

During SCP, "cactus" wasn't charging for the first 18 days, during which time Vmote dropped from 12.9->11.3V, or about 0.1V/day.

I note that Tsoil.a2, which doesn't have a solar panel, over the last 2.5 days has dropped from 12.8->12.5, or about 0.1V/day.

It is nice to see consistency...

See subject.  We also note that Tsoil.4.4cm.a appears to have become bad after an earlier rain event (Jun 7), though there was a data outage at that time.

Weather: Partly cloudy, maybe rain in the afternoon

Summary:  32m sonic down this morning (4:00 to 7:00). Back up, will monitor, no rain on rainr.b, Will check.

Sonics: ok, see note above

TRH, P: ok

Wind Speed & Dir: ok

Soil, Rainr:  Tsoilb @ 4,4cm seems to be misbehaving. Rain event early this morning, ~3:00am, no rain action on rainr.b

Vmote (rad, a, a2, b): 11.8 to 12.5

Radiation, Wetness:ok, wetness at pond still down, waiting for spare

H2O, CO2: Krypton signals low, likely due to water on the lenses

System (GPS, Vdsm): ok

Pond: ok except for wetness

32m statistics were down (sonic, licor, pressure) at 32m from about 0400-0700 this morning.  They are back now, either by themselves or by some action from Gordon.

This is related to a second rain event last night.

14:55   A storm has fell upon us. The skies started darking and the winds picked up about 15 minutes ago then

somebody turned on the garden hose! Winds on cockpit pushing 20 m/s at the top levels.

Wind just picked up from the WSW, with lightning upwind.  We've heard things blowing around in the trees.  Winds at the tower top gusting to 19m/s!  Hopefully, the tower stays up...

11:30 - 13:50:  The 8KVA blew its fuse so Steve and I decide to remove the surge suppression black box. It turned into a bigger deal since we had

to remove a side panel that had some rivets. To add to the fun, while going out to the site the car decided to place a small rock

between the brake pad and a pad cover which resulted in a horrible noise. So one of us played mechanic and the other electrician.

Weather: cloudy, potential rain this afternoon.

Summary:  Wetness at pond down.

Sonics: ok, some LDIAG activity this morning (~6:30) on 43

TRH, P: ok, humidity pushing 100%

Wind Speed & Dir: ok

Soil, Rainr: ok

Vmote (rad, a, a2, b): 12 to 12.6

Radiation, Wetness: ok

H2O, CO2: ok

System (GPS, Vdsm): ok

Pond: ok, wetness out

Alex Guenther performed a quick survey of the tree species composition surround the AABC tower.

Using an average of 232 trees around the tower, he found:

At 1315, the emeralds died on low.  Haven't seen this problem in a while.  At 1338 we rebooted and everything came back up.

We had noticed that the tipping bucket mount was somewhat shaky.  I have just secured it by a bit of guying.  The bubble level had been out of the outer ring and now is within the inner ring (though not exactly centered).

For the last 2 days, (since about 0230 6/15), Wetness.pond has been low.  Upon inspection, there was nothing obviously wrong (though some of the plastics on the probe are cracked).  Reseating connectors and cycling power didn't help.  With water on the probe, the signal went from ~0.18V to ~0.0, which of course is the wrong sign.

I've brought the probe back to the base for further evaluation.  We do not appear to have a spare here.

P.S. Steve S. may have noted this elsewhere, but he told me that he opened up this sensor and found no bad connections.  He assumed that the internal circuitry in the the rubber mould died.  I note that the rubber had been deformed by the cable ties used to mount it.  Thus, we might want to be more careful with mounting these, in the future.

Due to some playing around with the webcam web site, 3 images on file are not oriented as previous ones. These are files created today from 9:28 to 9:48.

The camera was adjusted back to the original position. This position has been saved as preset 1.

Weather:  partly cloudy this morning

Summary:  Steve O. made changes to include the mote.a2 Tsoil data in the web plots. Tsoil.b still up since reconnect last yesterday. Wetness still down at pond.

Sonics: ok

TRH, P: ok

Wind Speed & direction: ok

Soil, Rainr: ok, Tsoil.b still looking good

Vmote (rad,a,b):12.2 to 12.7  new battery at tsoil.a not so good even though it was recharged

Radiation, Wetness: wetness at pond bad.

h2o, co2: ok

System (GPS, Vdsm): ok

6/15: 1 big, 3 small ticks