As of yesterday evening, this sensor, that had been reporting bad, spiky values, started reporting normally. We visited several days ago to take a core, but hadn't done anything.
Stephan de Wekker drove by s11 and noticed that it (like s9 did last week) blew off vertical. He straightened it and we'll visit today to secure it better, but we'll have to determine when this happened (undoubtedly during the Sundowner event of IOP 1/2) and remove the data.
Did the round of s11, s10, s09:
base: with the dry weighing of the last sample in the oven, Round 1 is now complete.
s11: (check on Stephan's fix of our radiometer installation)
- Stephan's fix looked good, with the screw anchor fully seated. I adjusted the level just a smidge.
- Based on Monday's meeting, downloaded all the raw data from April to my Mac, only to discover when I returned that all of the files were already on barolo.
s10: (routine check-up)
- everything looked good. Saw a deer walk by.
- returned to the site, remembering my conversation with Chris about the occasional Victron outages. Slightly reseated its USB cable on both ends and upgraded the firmware via the Victron connect app – both uploads were about 20 subversions newer. The Victron cycled power during the second upload. Everything seemed to come back normally.
s9: (routine)
- just checked guy wire tension and radiometers. All okay.
Just to place this information somewhere...
I rented from Z-team at 677 Pacific Ave, Oxnard CA, 93030 1-805-394-5700. The building is labeled "Nachos (Towing)" and has a non-descript front door. Call ahead for a reservation, the owner is John Zavala (zteamoffroad@gmail.com). Weekdays (obviously) are less busy. The rate for a Polaris RZR XP 4-seater side-by-side with trailer was $425/day, $2100/week, $3150/14 days, $5400/30 days. The trailer uses a 2" ball. I bought a hitch/ball for the truck and used it, but a larger drop would have been better.
Z-team puts a $1500 deposit hold on your credit card, but the charge never came through on mine.
Note that my T-card didn't work. I had to use my personal credit card. It would be better to figure things out in advance and have Rochell get purchasing involved.
Bill and I visited s15 this afternoon to look into the gsoil not reporting. Reseating the cables didn't help, so ended up replacing the gsoil (probe + board). The original one was left in place to avoid disturbing the plot, with the open connector taped over.
At the site we also noticed that 2 out of the 3 external guy wires were dangling loose, with the turnbuckles completely apart. Evidently the lock nuts on the turnbuckles weren't enough to keep them in place. We re-tensioned the guy wires and added zip ties to keep them in place. The lightning spike had also fallen off the top of the tower and was lying on the ground. We didn't have mast lowering supplies so we left it at the base of the tower for a future visit.
No cats today, alas.
Had to bring it back with ddn/dup again. Curious.
Took the day off to Santa Cruz (but then noted a weather station there – station SCZ), with rough seas (small craft advisory).
Inspecting qctables at the beginning and end of the day showed no new issues to me.
Start of IOP-1, so not expecting to do much ISFS work:
s9: (just changing the manfrotto screw anchor to a T stake to better withstand expected high winds)
- screw anchor seemed secure, but pulled out easily after one turn, so a good idea to have switched
- found that I hadn't tightened the TRH setscrews, so TRH was dangling by its cable! Bad Steve. Now secure.
iss2: Mary Cal did the 1pm launch!
s13: took soil core
Also attended 2 meetings and worked on debugging the faulty SHTs – found at least one blown voltage regulator.
Hopefully, taking tomorrow off for an Island day trip, though not sure if it will go if the sundowner winds are correctly forecast!
All pretty quiet.
Only thing I noticed in the data was that the qsoil at s5 has been giving negative values, which (I think?) is bad. That's Exxon, so I don't think we could have gotten in today.
Just needed an "si" command sent to the mote. Tried this yesterday, but the connection was too sluggish.
The output message from this Ott didn't include the histogram. I've just followed the steps in this link (ISFS/SensorInformation/OTTParsivel#2.USAGE) to set the message. Since the serial number is reported as XXXXXXX, I'm assuming that it is serial number 410948 (haven't found the record of serial numbers in our wiki(?)) and followed the steps also described by the link to cheat. It now seems to be working as desired.
P.S. Found Tony's serial numbers in AssetPanda, showing that this sensor was 450620, so I've just changed this. No change of the actual sensor.
Low marine stratus, became thick fog as we went in the mountains.
Not much to do:
s10: (was sunny on top)
- change out Qsoil since old one had high values and spikes after the last storm
- clean NR01 at 11:32
- check data
s9: just drove up to – couldn't see site from parking area in the fog! Everything looked okay, and fan was running
s4:
- took soil core
- taped one connector on cr mote, since didn't have cap with us
- check data
s3:
- took core
s1:
- took core
- check data
Two more sites to go in the first round of soil cores...
Since we still had the UTV rented, went to s16 (the first time for me) with Bill (also a rare event!). Parked at the upper Oso campground, just shy of the gate. Returned to find a notice to pay a $10 fee to park there (despite our Gov't plates and the use permit on the dash).
s16:
- Took care of punch list items, except for the Y cable that I forgot at the bottom of the mountain.
- Took soil core
- Did nothing to the TRH (should have at least checked that the cable was seated well, but didn't)
- Found that the Ott is misconfigured – need to try to do this remotely.
- Tilted down the mast to clean the EC150, but didn't help the data much. I suspect the desiccant bottles may need to be changed, but that would invalidate the data for a day (and require a calibration check?)
- While mast was down, move the QDP to the other side of the sonic (away from the EC150).
- Need to add to standard visit check: reseat cables (at DSM); move wetness sensor flat (done today)
- Also noted that one bolt holding the capture plate had thread damage. Replaced with another slightly-less-damaged bolt, but should replace with a new one.
- Finally, need to add more site direction documentation – Google maps was somewhat off.
Ops officially begins tomorrow. The first IOP is planned for 3 days later.
Liz and Steve spent the day getting back to Cuyama Peak. Was worried about making it in a pickup, so rented a UTV from Z-team in Oxnard. Both of us took a turn behind the wheel.
The ride up was so much easier and somewhat faster than using the pickup, with the UTV going from 10–25mph. In the days since we were last there, the rain has scoured more gullys in the road and deposited even more rocks and biota. I so happy using the UTV that we decided to keep it for a drive to Little Pine tomorrow (the first time I will have been to this site).
s17:
- One inner guy was slack, others (including all outer guys) were fine.
- Tsoil binder connector was just a tiny bit loose – I'm actually surprised it wasn't working – but reseating it (and now taping) brought back the Tsoils
- TRH again needed the entire housing and SHT replaced. I think this makes 4 failures in this way. Still haven't had time to dig into the bad ones here.
- One DSM port didn't have a cap. Added.
- Took soil core
- Cleaned NR01 with alcohol at about 1420.
- We knew that the EC150 has had low readings and were prepared to lower the mast and clean it, but in 10m/s winds, we weren't comfortable doing this with only 2 people.
- Met Ranger Chris at the road junction who was curious about us. Says he patrols there a lot.
That's it! – a lot of driving.
Just a social morning for Steve:
- Met Dave Fitzjarrald at s1 to discuss his deployment plan.
- Also met Craig Clements and students at s1, who told me they saw 2 whale spouts this morning from the site! They seem ready to go with a lidar, surface met, and radiosondes.
Met the ISS crew for lunch in Solvang.
With Isabel:
s12:
- found that the station outage was due to the serial FTDI board coming loose from the serial front panel! Reseated, and the station came back up.
- guy tensions okay, manfrotto was a bit loose (probably the feet sunk in a bit)
- took a soil core
s2: (Finally got to Frinj)
- installed Y cable
- took soil core
- replaced fuse
- took photos
Plan for tomorrow is to rent a UTV and head back to Cuyama (s17) with Liz.