Confirmed: A RWD Uhaul pickup will make it to the SWEX Little Pine Site. If you decide to attempt this bring the following:
- A spare tire
- A second spare tire
- A can of fix-a-flat
- A pillow to sit on to help you see over the hood
- Gloves for moving fallen rocks
- Something to calm the nerves (that's legal)
- An extra truck with 4WD and second driver to drive you down when you run out of spare tires
- A second trip (about 4 hours), to retrieve truck from mountain top where you left it.
- Two more spare tires
On Monday we started with a new batch of helpers including two post-docs (Daisuke and Callum), and two Graduate students (Adam and Andrew) - learning setup for the potential ARISE project
We were able to setup two sites sequentially, S3 an then S1 .
Neither site has soil installed yet,and will be added later when we have enough Tsoils. Also S1 did not have the sonic reporting.
Then Tony and Dexter were able to return to little pine, add the dew sensor to the NR01, and free and return the pickup truck!
On Tuesday we first created 8 job boxes to simplify work moving forward. Then we drove to S10, and unloaded and laid out this site (new location)
Then three team members continued to S11. This site (S11) is less than optimal!
It is very open and accessible directly from the road.
There was not a good location for the NR01 or soils.
Neither S10 or S11 have soils installed, they will be installed later by Steve when he brings the rest of the Tsoils.
We setup the ISFS station at Sedgwick on March 12 with Tony, Gert-Jan and Chris.
The ground was fairly soft here, but seemed firm enough to hold stakes.
This tower had the DSM mounts in a wierd location (under the mask), and one of the guy wires was too short, which was recified with additional quick links.
This setup went smoothly except for the Sonic which never came alive. This will have to be looked at during burn-in
There was a fire in the distance ( Hollister Fire, near Gaviota State Park); hopefully this will not impact other set ups.
On the drive back, we scouted out the exact location of the S13, Rancho Alegre (boy scout camp). This should be an easy setup with a drive up to the site.
The one pickup is still on Little Pine and will hopefully be retrieved tomorrow.
The top of Little Pine was setup today with Gert-Jan, Tony, Dexter and Chris.
This was a long drive followed by a long carry. The road is OK, but not for the Uhaul pickup. It expeienced two flats, and will have to be retrieved sometime at a later date.
The green wagon was a big help for setup, and should probably be utalized for teardown.
The ground was generally soft
Two items still remail:
Add the leaf wetness sensor to the NR01
Add the knucle to the ground rod
Today Tony, Gert-Jan, and Chris Set up S18, (Windermere).
Met Milo at gate - he was very friendly and helpful.
Everyone did and great job, and everyone learned different aspects of the set up.
All equipment was reporting after setup.
Note 1: I used the wierd "Y" power cables on the first two sets of solar panels, but that may not be correct.
I did verify charging on both S4 and S18, but the Y power cable does not seem to be a parallel configuration.
If not we may want to change the power cable connecting the two panels at S4 and S18.
Note 2: There are animals free roming on the property, Lama, Steer, donkey, some goats, Milo said they generally leave stuff alone, and we will play a wait and see game.
There are other communications equipment with wiring, and the animals leave all of that alone.
Milo did offer to put some panel fench around the equipment if the animals bother it.
Meet with Gert-Jan, and load a single truck with everything needed for a single site (S4). Everything seemed to fit well and we almost remembered all of the needed pieces and parts.
We did move the site to the South site of the dirt road with Gert-Jan permission. The north side had 3 meter tall weeds, which would drown most of our instruments and solar panels.
Receive POD for ISFS onsite storage of empty boxes.
Setup most of S4, and erected the tower.
A long hard day of learning!!
The DSM was reporting on all conencted channels exept for the GPS. Gary is looking into this but it seems like the GPS serial stream is not making into the Pi??
Left to do:
- install second set of soils,
- tie up cables at DSM,
- determine if solar is charging
- fix wetness sensor
- wrap cables
Tony and Chris did much of the staging and organizing that normally happens in Boulder berfore the project. We created 8 job totes, that will get us half through setup.
Organized tools and made sure that we had enough of everything for two teams.
Organized the staying of Dexter for an extra week to help out ISFS during the long carry sites, and during the transition to two teams (Thanks Dexter!!)
Went back to S4 to finish up setup:
- install second set of soils.
- add groupnd strap
- wrap the cables
- played with solar connection and swapped output location until we were seeing changing of ~ 1.8 Amps.
- key for the gate now hangs in the base trailer next to ranger's card.
Gert-jan, Tony, Dexter and Chris setup S9 today.
The very top of the peak now has a bench, making it a poor spot. We did a fair bit of scouting to find the optimal spot, and found none. We finally settled on the spot pitcured below as the best compromise for a NW fetch. The NR01 is less than ideal, but out of the shadow of the tower.
This site does look like it receives some foot traffic, and is next to the road. I camera was mounted on the boom.
One guy wire was too long, and we had to shorten the turnbuckle screw, and remove the locking bolts (locked with zip ties)
We will have to watch this site for tripod footpad looseness. A few footpads felt solid, but a few were looser, and this site will see some higher winds.
Items still needed at this site:
Sticker for camera
Contact info (req by forest service)
USB wire between victron and DSM
Caps on the DSM.
Tomorrow Little Pine with the help of Dexter.
Tony and Chris arrived safely in Galeto on Saturday evening (March 5), with the filled 26' Penski and the white truck
Today (March 6) Activities:
Receive base trailer,
Set up base trailer and connect electric - all working
Organize Penski
Stage equipment for easier setup
Pickup U-Haul rental truck - We learned that this is not a 4x4 (U-Haul has never had 4 wheel drive units available, even though Tony verified with U-Haul during the reservation process!) The truck does have an 8 foot bed and good clearance, so we should be OK.
We also learned that Tony's T card will not allow rental of trucks - sent email to try and fix
Tony has improved our checklist.
We did determine that we seem to be short about four NR01 booms, but luckily these are 4' x 1" diameter aluminum poles, so we should be able to find alternates somewhere.
So far we have not found any other deficienties.
Tomorrow we plan to start with the San Marcos Preserve Site.
T and RH post calibrations were done (2020 Nov 11 and 2020 Nov 18, respectively) on all deployed sensors, so that there would be a record for posterity. T data from SN 104 were not recorded, due to a LabView bug. Also, the reference temperature was recorded in ohms, so I wrote code to convert it to degrees that might not be perfect.
All T data were great, with consistently slightly negative offsets, but still within -0.1 degC of the reference.
The RH data were not quite as good, with values high by up to 5%, but typically within 0.5 to 2.5%. The largest errors were at cold temperatures (0 degC). Errors at 20 and 40 degC were typically about 1%, or close to our specification.
Thus, T/RH data from SWEX20 are usable without correction – not bad for sensors left unattended for 9 months. (Though there were fan issues...)
Weather: Warm and sunny.
Tasking:
- Finished POD packing
- Closed out storage unit
- Packed base trailer for shipment
That is a wrap folks! The trucker will pick up the base trailer tomorrow afternoon and Chris and I will be departing Santa Barbara. Until next time...
Weather: Warm and partly cloudy all day
Tasking:
- POD packing
- White Chevy oil change
- Silver Chevy tire repair
Plan for tomorrow:
- Packing base trailer
- Closing out storage unit
Weather: Cool and overcast morning, followed by low stratus for the remainder of the day
Tasking:
- S15 (Figueroa Mountain) teardown. Lock securing fire station gate has been changed, had to communicate with the USFS dispatch to gain access. Tire was punctured by a stick while driving into site and had to be swapped with a spare. Issues found at teardown included:
- Mote serial cable chewed through in multiple spots
- TRH fan inop
Plan for tomorrow:
- Down day! All sites have been removed, packing will begin on Monday.
Weather: Cool and foggy morning, followed by scattered clouds and sunshine the remainder of the day
Tasking:
- S3 (El Capitan Canyon) teardown. Big thanks to Mack for the help. All sensors appeared operation during a cursory check. Issues found at teardown included:
- A loose connection at the OTT cable sensor end causing corrosion between power and ground pins
Plan for tomorrow:
- S15 (Figueroa Mountain) teardown. Last site!
Weather: Cool and foggy morning on the south side of the ridge. Stratocumulus and warm once we reached Sedgwick.
Tasking:
- S14 (Sedgwick Reserve) teardown. Their sign in procedure is similar to previous visits, the only difference being the check-in station is now a tent by the main building. All sensors appeared operation during a cursory check. Issues found at teardown include:
- Bulgin cable for the radiometer tripod that Leila replaced was destroyed in a few spots, did not appear to be chew marks. Potentially stomped by an animal? There is sometimes a donkey about.
- Copious amounts of wasps made their way into the battery box. We should try to insect proof the bulkhead holes in the bottom better.
- Helped ISS lower and disassemble their mast at Cachuma Lake on the way back to base.
Plan for tomorrow:
- S3 (El Capitan Canyon) teardown. Mack is planning on coming out with us, the help is much appreciated since this site has a long carry.