Blog from July, 2013

July 8, 2013

10:30 - 12:00pm CDT

This was for 26M TRH problems.

8Jul13

The 26m trh fan went out during the rain yesterday morning and consequently the temp/rh was incorrect from 7Jul13 7:30 (local) - 8Jul13 ~12 (local)

This morning tried power cycling it to see if that would restart the fan, using on 'mid' vio 2 0/1.   Instead the sensor went out completely.

Site Visit 8Jul ~10:30-12:00.    The fan was running but making noise.   A finger check appeared to unclog a small piece of debris and it seems to be quite good.    However, power cycling it physically didn't resurrect the ingest, nor did we get any ingest from swapping in the working trh from port 8 and the 26m trh worked fine in port 11.    It was swapped to port 11 and Gordon fixed the xml so that it's working on the new port with the cockpit and data plots again.

8jul13 update mid-day.

RadMote / radiometers outage 6Jul13 ~23:00 local - 7Jul ~11:00 local wi

The mote leds indicated that it was still running and the battery was ok; 12.4.   I power cycled it and there was a normal startup.   It appears the the local data storage chip is installed, but no gps so recovering the data is basically impossible.

TsoilB mote battery swapped.   Shortly before the above the 11.3v battery was removed and a 12.8v one installed.   It's possible that the rad mote is routing through the tsoilB radio similar to tsoilA2?   Need to test for this.

20m Sonic down from: 6Jul13,~13:30 - 7Jul13....

The 20m sonic died during the continuous rain event yesterday.

Site visit 7Jul ~10-11am:   Fortunately a branch did not get it.   Power cycling by 'eio 12 0/1' or plugging/unplugging on lower didn't solve it.   The eio power cycle and power itself are ok.   Briefly swapped 13m sonic on port 9 to port 12 to confirm the emerald is ok; it is.  At one point when plugging the 20m cable in I did see it try to startup with intermittent bursts of garbage coming through.    Appears to be a cable or connector got wet.   Need to wait for 2nd person to climb.

More later,

7jul13 update mid-day.

Weather: Similar to yesterday, a rain day, solid overcast and continuous rain throughout the day.

Summary: Rain events during the night.    Cool temperatures, low winds.

System: ok, running.    GPS/Vdsm: ok

Sonics: All Sonics effected by rain from time to time.   8m, 32m and 43.9m more so.    20m sonic died in afternoon.   Power cycling didn't fix it.

TRH, P: ok.   Cockpit showing RIP for p.43m however data is coming in on 'ds' and 'rs' and plots

Wind Speed & Dir: ok

Soil, Rainr:  tsoila.4.4cm down

Rainr:  Rain events overnight.  Significant rain around 4:30-5:30am with continuous showers for several hours afterwards.  5am events shown on b but otherwise the rain isn't getting into it.   Checked bucket yesterday and it was ok.

Vmote (rad, a, a2, b): ok.   VmoteB low at 11.8

Radiation, Wetness: ok

H2O, CO2: ok, kryptons effected by rain.   Licor7500 diags all remain above 240: normal operation.

WebCam: ok.

Pond:ok

John and I checked the rain gauge at soilb for clogs at about 12:00am. It was clean.

The 2m krypton was cleaned.

UPDATE: The gauge did show a tip when a rain event moved through at about 2:00 pm

and the 2m krypton went to 0 volts.

Weather: Similar to yesterday, a rain day, overcast morning

Summary: Rain events during the night and morning. Sonics 32m and 43.9m effected by rain.

Check rain at soilb for clog.

Sonics: running, 32m and 43.9m effected by rain

TRH, P: ok

Wind Speed & Dir: ok

Soil, Rainr:  tsoila.4.4cm down, rain events from ~7:00 pm to 11:00 pm, and 7:00 am to 8:00 am this morning

early morning rain event not showing on rain at soilb. May need cleaning.

Vmote (rad, a, a2, b): 12.7, 12.6, 12.8, 11.9

Radiation, Wetness: ok

H2O, CO2: ok, krypton effected by rain

System (GPS, Vdsm): ok

Pond:ok

From about 1620-1650 was on the tower, primarily to take a set of LAI measurements (see its own entry).

At this time, also cleaned kryptons (first 2m, then 14m).  Note that I added water to the wetness sensor at 14m, but forgot to brush it off once I was done about a minute later.  Did LAI's after this.

From about 0400-0515, there are not data on the plots.  This is because there are no data in the isfs...bz2 raw_data files for any of the dsms (including pond).  However, rawdata files on each of the dsms appear to be complete.

Our current thought is this was due to a power outage at least at the base trailer.  "flux" stayed up, but "eddy" appears to be down.  /media/backup on flux also was unmounted, also suggesting a power drop.

Nevertheless, we shouldn't have lost data due to battery-backed-up power at the sites.

Weather: A very rainy day

Summary: On and off rain from 2:00am to present. Power was lost this morning ~4:00 to 5:00

Sonics: running, 13.9m & 32m reacting to rain more then other sonics

TRH, P: ok

Wind Speed & Dir: ok

Soil, Rainr:  tsoila.4.4cm down, rain events through the night

Vmote (rad, a, a2, b): 12.8, 12.7, 12.8, 12.1

Radiation, Wetness: ok

H2O, CO2: kryptons down due to rains

System (GPS, Vdsm): ok

Pond: ok

This one just started at the base (16:23, 3 July).

Moderate rain ended 16:39, still light showers.

16:54 showers now over as well.

Ran a script to modify some variable names and attributes in the netcdf files:

• CNR4 radiometer is actually at 41 meters, not 36
• added some long_name attributes for variables

Also updated the CNR4 height in the XML, and restarted dsm_server and statsproc.

This done between 3:52 and 3:57 CDT this afternoon.

A quick shower came through just before 3:00 pm.