Antonio and Chris skied into Gothic (road is now closed) on Dec 20. We retrieved a TRH from the storage to swap out the 12m TRH.
On Dec 21, we go an early start and skied out to the Kettle Ponds site.
1) Antonio climbed to 12m and swapped the entire TRH (probe and housing). Old/bad (poor fan RPM control) probe was SN 057, The new probe was SN 003.
2) Chris opened the snow pillow #3 control box; plugged the firmware update cable directly into the snow pillow control PCB, and was able to update the firmware of snow pillow 3. Previous attempts use the connector on the outside of the control box, which did not allow the firmware update to occur (there must be an issue with the cable between the bulkhead and the PCB that will not allow updates).
3) We installed the Tsoil mote on the center tower just above the CL (center lower) DSM . We were able to push the USB connecter through the bulkhead opening and plugged the USB into the DSM serial PCB of the CL DSM.
4) We measured the voltage on both downwind lidar power supplies (This is the only tower which uses the AC power bricks for the lidars - the other two towers use 12 VDC power from the Victon to power the lidars). Ethan had indicated that he had seen some low voltage conditions on the lidars. Both power supplies read 12.2 V (while loaded). We did not want to change the power supplies without further communications with Ethan, and possible direct communications to determine the impacts of swapping. The two spare 12V lidar power supplies where left in the salamander room in the user sensor tub.
5) We looked at the radiometers on the downwind tower. Antonio climbed and tried to clean the downward facing radiometers. This was not very effective, and conditions were not ideal for this. The reach to the outer radiometer was The upward facing radiometers are very difficult to reach especially in the existing weather conditions. This should be done during a low wind day with higher temps.
We left the following items in the storage room:
The snow pillow programming cables and equipment.
The spare lidar AC brick power supplies (12 VDC out)
Bluetooth Mote to be used with extra Tsoil sensors.
The old TRH (with bad fan) - labeled in a bag. It is possible that the TRH or housing are OK.
Snow depth around the center tower were around 3 to 6 ". Snow depth along the walking path between the center and downwind varied between ~6 to 12". Snow depth around the downwind tower appeared to be about 9". The UW and UE towers were not visited, but we do have some pictures of them.
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The webcam captures the crew on site:
