Our initial plan for the day was to investigate why s5 fell off the net yesterday evening and check on the radiometer at s18. Unfortunately, we never made it to s18.
As it turns out, the tripod at s5 must have blown over in the ~20 m/s winds it faced yesterday. Steve does not recall this ever happening before, but the stakes on the “northwest” leg pulled right out of the fairly loose, sandy soil. Upon visual inspection the only damage was to the EC100, which was pretty smashed after landing on a rock. I suspect the fall may not have been all that violent, since I found no other signs of damage. That said, we spent the afternoon replacing the CSAT, EC150, EC100, and Gill and lugging supplies up and down the mountainside.
After some discussion, we secured the footpad with a 70 pound bag of sand and will add more tomorrow when we have the energy to haul them up the hill. We can consider adding a set of guy wires secured to screw anchors, but for now I think the sand will be sufficient. We left the tower lowered and resting on the mast stand, but powered on so that I could check the data remotely. Tomorrow we will visit the site again to dress cables, raise the mast, and further secure the footpad.
This evening I also noticed that the Vbatt for s11 has been NA all day, but not the rest of the site. Restarting Nidas remotely did not recover the Victron stream.
