Some fog to the south this morning, although not as much as the last couple of days. Sunny all day and a high in the mid-40s.
Wrapped up ISS teardown today, loading the last few items into the two trailers and the Penske truck and tying down the contents. Also removed and packed the stairs and platform on the ISS1 trailer and pulled the power cable.
After finishing off the ISS, Liz and Dexter returned the sounding trailer to Utah RV rentals down in Salt Lake, Matt and I helped Steve and Clayton take down the ISFS Memorial Hill site, then we all did more equipment packing. We also transferred equipment from the ISFS Penski to our Penski to consolidate the contents in one truck to return to Boulder.
Contacted the school district about removing the Ubiquiti link we were using for high speed internet. Their technician will be at the Midway Elementary School tomorrow so we'll try to retrieve it then. Gave Sebastian a USB disk with preliminary data from the ISS.
Liz, Dexter, Matt, and Lou pulling the power cable and loading the stairs onto the front of the ISS1 trailer
More fog and cold early this morning that cleared to a mostly sunny day with a with around 40F and increasing clouds late in the day.
ISS teardown continued dismantling the Modular Wind profiler antenna frame, and packing of the ISS1 and lidar trailers. The profiler antennas, frame and RASS were loaded into the Penske truck along with other items for return to Boulder. At the ISFS base trailer, we also took down the GPS water vapor system, one last camera and the last Ubiquiti antenna.
Dexter dismantling the GPS Water Vapor sensors at the Railway Service pad site
Fog on the southeast side of the valley at 8am this morning
A sunny calm day, although still cold with a high of 32F. Quite a thick fog at the south end of the valley this morning (see photo below).
Today we were mostly working at the North Pivot field ISS1 site. We dismantled the Modular Profiler which was challenging because of the large amount of ice and snow built up underneath. The process was to slowly raise the antenna, carefully clear away snow, remove the fence and RASS shields, disconnect and remove the antenna panels to allow access and the sun to shine in, add ice-melt to areas where cables and other hardware were frozen in, remove the electronics boxes, gently clip away at the ice and gradually pull the cables out. As far as we can tell only one of the many cables were damaged. The profiler has been mostly dismantled and cables coiled, although we haven't started on the frame yet and still need to pack many components.
We also took down the ceilometer, met tower, Ott disdrometer and cameras, and packed up much of the inside of the ISS1 trailer. At the end of the day, Liz, Matt, and Dexter (being young and gung-ho) went off to help the ISFS team at the Center Creek site for an hour or two.
Liz, Dexter, and Matt working on the Modular Wind Profiler teardown
Fog at the south end of the valley at 9am this morning.
Today the weather was mostly cold and cloudy, although there were a few brief sunny periods and also some more snow at times.
Teardown is continuing. We picked up our Penske truck and began loading it up with boxes and equipment from the lidar trailer at the Railway Service pad site to make space for packing the wind lidar. Utah Crane, a local company, came and lowered the wind lidar from the roof of the lidar trailer and we packed it up into its case. We also took down other equipment on top of the trailer. We packed up the CL61 ceilometer from the sounding site as well as the Met tower from that site. At the profiler site, there was further packing inside the trailer and preparations for dismantling the Modular Profiler planned for tomorrow.
Dexter joined us today so we now have our full teardown crew of Lou, Liz, Matt, Dexter and myself.
Liz preparing to hook the wind lidar to a crane for lowering from the lidar trailer
Some scattered fog overnight, apparently great conditions for the IOP that was held last night.
This morning it was cold but sunny, although this afternoon it clouded over with a little more snow expected tonight.
Teardown began today with backups of data at all sites and the dismantling of the sounding site. The sounding equipment in the trailer was packed up and the trailer towed to the North Pivot ISS1 site. The 10-foot tower at the sounding site was stripped although we haven't taken down the tower itself yet. The CL61 ceilometer at that site is also still there, although powered down when we pulled power from the sounding trailer.
At the ISFS base trailer, we packed up the data manager computer, GPS water vapor receiver, networking and lidar computer. The lidar is shutdown in preparation for being lifted tomorrow. At ISS1 all computers were powered down, monitors and other bench equipment packed up and snow cleared from around the Modular Profiler.
Matt dismantling the met tower at the sounding site.
Another cold day with periods of snow. Lou and Liz arrived last night and today we began preparations for teardown. We dug out snow from around the profiler and other areas of the ISS1 site. The profiler was down from around 18 - 19 UTC while we worked in the profiler enclosure and removed the covers from the two south RASS dishes. We also organized boxes and packing material, and backed up data.
Adjusted the wind lidar scanning cycle for the final IOP tonight. I added a 50 m resolution sector scan over the DC supersite and sounding area since there has been patchy fog rising from the nearby ponds. Most of the other scans are 100 meter scans trying to observe the air flow over the wider valley. The scan cycle repeats approximately every 15 minutes and includes 100m PPI scans over the wider valley, RHI scans towards the Provo RIver supersite to the north, Daniels Canyon to the east and the Deer Creek reservior to the south, as well as a 2-minute vertical stare (which allows the WALS software to estimate boundary layer depth) and a 75 deg PPI for VAD winds.
Launched two soundings this afternoon, at 2:50pm (delayed from 2:30pm by the snowy conditions and a frozen padlock on the Helium trailer) and at 4:30pm (delayed by a ground check failure requiring a reset of the whole system). Eric, Sebastian and Alexei will be launching the final soundings over the campaign overnight.
A variable weather day. It was snowing again overnight and early this morning (leaving a couple more inches of snow), then that cleared out to a nice sunny morning. By the middle of the day it clouded over and a cold wind picked up, and by evening it was snowing again. Some of today's activities:
Cleaned about 2 inches of snow off the Modular Profiler antenna around 1815 UTC.
Cleaned about the same amount from the RASS dishes around 1940 UTC, and cleaned off some remaining snow melt and ice from the antennas.
Around 1930 UTC the draw on the amp power supplies was 4.37A on the 50V and 1.836A on the 32V supplies in winds mode, and 3.66A on the 50V and 1.885A on the 32V supplies. Interestingly later in the day when the outside temperature had dropped to around 18F, the 50V draw had jumped to 5.2 - 5.6A in winds mode. John says this is expected when it's very cold.
Late in day covered the south two RASS dishes since the overnight forecast is for 2 - 4 inches more snow. Chose the south two since only had enough clips to secure two covers so will keep RASS running and with the forecast winds from the north we still might get decent RASS signals.
The wind lidar stopped transferring data last night. I initially thought it was just a communications issue, but it turned out to have stopped part way through a scan cycle for some unknown reason. Windforge wasn't responding but the computer responded to Monit requests and pings. In the end climbed up to the roof and did a hard restart. Data happened to restart flowing at 2220 UTC (on 2/22/22, is that a coincidence or something else ... 8-)
The 4:15pm sounding was delayed because of a lack of Helium. The students drained out the last two tanks in a couple of soundings last night, fortunately Sebastian brought out a couple more cylinders. Steve assisted with this cold and rather windy sounding.
Attended the daily planning meeting (and a couple of other meetings) where the PIs discussed a possible final IOP tomorrow night.
A cold snowy day, with 2 - 3 inches of snow, mostly during the morning followed by a another round in the later afternoon and evening.
We gave Terry the grand tour, starting off at the North Pivot / ISS1 site, then Steve took him to the DC Supersite, then I met them at the sounding site, then the Soldier Hollow ISFS site, then the Base Trailer to see the lidar. Eric and Sebastian joined us, then they all went around some of the ISFS sites before finishing up back at ISS1. He didn't get to see the mountains but he did see lots of equipment, and had a good discussion with Eric and Sebastian. They are thinking about a possible last IOP on the night of Feb 23 into the following morning.
Other activities:
Around 18 UTC the Modular Profiler was drawing 4.53 on the 50V supply and 1.830A on the 32V supply in winds mode. In RASS mode it was drawing 3.75A from the 50V and 1.88A from the 32V supplies. The RASS amplifier output was 11.45 VAC.
Cleaned off about 4-5 cm of snow from the Modular Profiler. At 1812 UTC, stopped the profiler, cleaned off antennas 1 and 3 (channels 0 and 1), then restarted for 5 minutes (1817-1822 UTC) to see if I could detect any differences between those channels and antenna 2/channel 2 (which still had snow). The effect was small, perhaps just 1 or 2 dB. Cleaned off the remaining panel and restarted around 1825 UTC.
Later in the day, cleaned off around 5cm of snow from the RASS dishes. At 0030 UTC (Feb 22) was before cleaning out, then did an extra RASS run at 0055 UTC. The effect wasn't large, perhaps around 100m of extra range. Also cleaned a thin layer of ice/snow from the profiler antenna around 01 UTC.
The wind lidar had limited range in the snow as expected. I added extra wipes to the schedule to clean off snow, and also added some extra observing cycles around 21 - 22 UTC while we had visitors. Afterwards left the lidar in a 30 minute cycle. The database seems to be steady at 84.8%.
Launched the regular sounding at 2315 UTC which was uneventful apart from the snow.
Steve and Terry on the snow tour of the Modular Profiler
Sunny this morning, but then clouded over with a windy change around midday. John and Jacquie left this morning - thank you both for all your work during your stay.
Before he left, John covered the Modular Profiler antenna with a tarp to stop snow building up underneath with the looming snow storm before we do teardown later in the week. The wind picked up later very quickly to around 10 m/s and it was a bit of a shamble to secure it down and stop it blowing away. The profiler was down for this work around 18 - 19 UTC and 21 UTC. Around 2130 UTC the 50V and the 32 V supplies were drawing 4.60 A and 1.83 A in winds mode, and 3.86 A and 1.88 A in RASS mode. The RASS amplifier output was 11.45 VAC.
At the ISFS base trailer, climbed up to check the wind lidar and cameras. There's still plenty of wiping fluid for the lidar. I did notice a couple of minor blemishes on the lidar window and tried to get a photo but reflections from the cloudy sky made that difficult. The 4:15 sounding was mostly uneventful although it was very breezy so I let it go a few minutes early to avoid damaging the balloon. Also spent some time documenting the sites and checking serial numbers before the weather comes in.
Terry arrived this evening and we'll give him the tour tomorrow.
Clear today light haze in the afternoon. IOP 8 finished up today and there is no futher IOPs are scheduled. There is a weather system moving in late tomorrow thru Wednesday that is expected to bring rain initially on Sunday night followed by snow and colder temperatures to the valley. Bill arrives late today and I leave tomorrow.
ISS1 – All systems running nominally at ISS1 again today. Profiler status this morning: @ 0930 100m: 4.59A @ 50V & 1.833A @ 32V, and @0930 150m rass: 3.79A @ 50V & 1.882 A @ 32 V. Some of the 6’ coaxial cables that run from the troughs to the 6-way splitters under the antennas may be frozen in snow and ice between the troughs and the antenna splitters. However, these can be disconnected from the troughs so the troughs can be removed and brought to SWEX. Planning on covering the antenna array with a tarp tomorrow morning with Bill to minimize impact of the incoming weather.
ISS2 – All systems nominal at the ISS2 site today.
ISFS – Went with Steve and Jacquie to the Deer Creek supersite in the morning. Steve worked on the Lake Creek site in the afternoon (see ISFS blog for details).
Soundings – On our way to the 4:15 pm sounding today Jacquie and I ran in to Zhaoxia Pu, one of the PI’s from the University of Utah, at the sounding site. We showed her the sounding system and assisted her and her husband with launching the afternoon sounding today.
A beautiful, clear and cool day today with a few cumulus clouds earlier in day and some light haze in the afternoon. IOP 7 finished today and the PI’s have called IOP 8 from noon today to noon tomorrow (Saturday) using the persistent fog sounding schedule. I went with Steve to the sounding site at ~9:00 pm for about 90 minutes. Steve spoke with Sebastian about teardown plans and I helped with the 10:15 pm sounding.
ISS1 – All systems running nominally at ISS1 today. Profiler status this morning: @ 1023 100m: 4.59A @ 50V & 1.841A @ 32V, and @1030 150m rass: 3.89A @ 50V & 1.888 A @ 32 V. Bill had us plug in a second external USB drive into the profiler computer. It is plugged into the front of the tower next to the orange external hard drive and was detected by the system.
ISS2 – All systems nominal at the ISS2 site this morning and afternoon.
ISFS – Nothing to report on the ISFS side today.
Soundings – We were asked to launch a sonde in support of IOP8 at ~2 pm today, which we did without incidence. The sounding system software has not been running on the sounding computer when we arrived for the past two days. We rebooted the system after the 2 pm sounding was completed and prior to the 4:15 sounding. On helium, one tank on the right hand side of the trailer was emptied with last night’s IOP, and final tank on the right side was tagged with orange tape and a message that read, “Issue with valve – hissing”. Another tank was nearly depleted with the 10:15 pm sounding, so there is just under 2 tanks of helium left plus the ‘hissing valve’ tank, which I will take a look at during tomorrow afternoon’s sounding.
Colder today with a high in the 30’s and a cold southerly wind. IOP7 did start today at noon (though it was not officially called on Slack until 1227).
ISS1 – All systems running at the ISS1 site just fine today. Profiler status this morning: @ 0921 100m: 4.82A @ 50V & 1.844A @ 32V, and @0930 150m rass: 3.89A @ 50V & 1.888 A @ 32 V. After the 4:15 pm sounding, I stopped the profiler for a few minutes and raised the antenna array up ~6” to get the troughs out of the snow and ice. The only cable I saw encased in ice was one of the speaker cables. I did not see anything that would prevent removing the troughs for use in SWEX.
ISS2 – No issues at the ISS2 site today with everything running nominally.
ISFS – Morning and early afternoon were spend lowering the towers and the two super sites to replace non-functioning thermocouples and clean radiometers, all under the watchful eyes of the cows. More on Jacquie’s ISFS posting as well.
Soundings – We brought 15 more sondes over to the sounding trailer from the full box in the lidar trailer this morning. Jacquie launched the first IOP sonde at 2:10 pm on her own as I had my LEAD class today. At the 4:15 pm launch, we fully depleted three more helium tanks that had residual amounts of gas in them. Now all the cylinders tagged as empty are 100% empty and we still have ~4 cylinders of helium for the remainder of the project as of 4:30 this afternoon. Sebastian will probably need some helium for tether sonde operations tonight.
Colder today with higher humidity and a light, cold northeasterly wind. We did not get any accumulation of snow and only saw a few flakes as the system appears to have pasted to the east of the valley. IOP7 is tentatively planned from noon tomorrow (Thursday) to noon Friday.
ISS1 – All systems running at the ISS1 site, including the RASS. Profiler status this morning: @ 1021 100m: 4.63A @ 50V & 1.83A @ 32V, and @1030 150m rass: 3.84A @ 50V & 1.885 A @ 32 V. There was a strong interfering signal being pickup on frequency 0 by all channels this morning, again with the strongest signal being picked up by the red channel (0).
ISS2 – No issues at the ISS2 site today with everything running nominally. Bill was again working on the lidar system, though I have no update on any progress he may have made.
ISFS – No issues with the ISFS system today that needed our attention. Tomorrow looks like it there will be some tower and thermocouple work for us to do in preparation for the IOP.
Soundings – No problems with the afternoon sounding today. I was able to drain 5 cubic feet of helium out of a tanks on the left hand side of the trailer that had previously been flagged as empty again today. Sebastian and I went through the remaining tanks on the left hand side of the trailer and found a couple with some residual volume in them that we will try to use tomorrow. There was one tank that was nearly full but flagged as empty, possibly since it was thought that it was leaking before we found that the leaking was really being caused by the nipple and nut on the end of the high pressure hose. There are essentially 3 full tanks on the left hand side of the trailer and ~1.5 on the right hand side, so there is plenty of helium available for the remainder of the project.
We also counted the number of sondes used thus far. There have been 92 successful soundings and 2-3 failed sondes. There are 15 sondes left in the sounding trailer for a total of 107 sondes. There is an unopened box of sondes in the lidar trailer and Bill has asked us to move 15 more sondes over from the lidar trailer to sounding trailer.
A busy day in the Wasatch Back valley! Day was overcast to mostly cloudy, with a stiff southerly breeze, and cooler than in the last few days. There is no IOP planned for tomorrow with the next IOP possibility on Thursday into Friday.
ISS1 – Profiler status this morning: @ 1021 100m: 4.46A @ 50V & 1.833A @ 32V, and @0930 150m rass: 3.70A @ 50V & 1.881 A @ 32 V. There were several things of note today from the ISS1 site.
First, I noticed a few days ago that the histogram of signal to noise ratio (SNR) for channel 0 (red) was higher in the xplotmapr Diagnostics plot. I theorized that this was due to channel 0’s antenna panel receiving more morning sunlight, thereby melting off the frost layer faster than on the other channels’ antennas. Today I noticed on the profiler’s Display screen that the SNR for the red channel was higher than the other channels when an interfering signal was being picked up (see image below). This is likely due to the orientation of the antennas, clutter fence, the speaker surrounds, and the direction the interfering signal is coming from. This additional signal strength may be contributing to the higher SNR levels in the distribution seen in the Diagnostics window.
Next, when the RASS mode started there was no sound coming out of the speakers. I did not see a signal LED light up on the audio power amplifier so it looked as if the amplifier was not generating an output signal. I started by disconnecting the speakers from the terminal block and power cycling the amplifier. While disconnecting the speakers from the terminal block I noted that the speakers were connected in parallel, which presents a lower impedance to the output of the audio amplifier, which causes higher currents from the amplifier that could potentially damage the output stage(s) and/or trip the internal over-current/over-temperature protection circuity that the amplifier has built in, per its datasheet. I do think one of the protection circuits was triggering, most likely the over-temperature protection, as a result of the speakers being wired in series. To present a higher impedance to the amplifier's output, I rewired the speakers to be in series and the ran the RASS mode. The system for a couple of minutes before the audio stopped working again. I now suspected that one of the two output stages of the amplifier may beginning to fail, which could be tripping the protection circuitry. I enabled the audio amplifier’s “Y” Input Switch so that the input signal is sent to both channels of the amplifier. I also switched the amplifier’s output from Bridged Mode to Dual and connected the series-wired speakers to the channel 1 output terminals. As a result, I had to increase the output level of the power amplifier to get the same volume out, but the system is now running using only channel 1 of the audio amplifier. I measured the AC voltage coming out of the amplifier at the terminal block with a multimeter to be 11.4 VAC across the four speakers wired in series, with each speaker is seeing ~2.85 VAC across its terminals. Below are some pictures of how the speakers are wired at the terminal block, the settings and LED display on the power amplifier, as well as a few action shots of me taken by Jacquie.
Jacquie took some pictures of the snow conditions around the array while the system was stopped. It looks like all the frame and cabling on the frame are free from the snow and ice and that it will be possible to simply raise the array to remove the RFE troughs and much of the cabling.
ISS2 – Fortunately, there were no issues at the ISS2 site today. Bill was working on the lidar laptop, trying to free up some disc space, but otherwise nothing to report.
ISFS – While I was debugging the RASS, Isabel informed Jacquie that the ISS1 DSM was no longer responding on the network. The problem was traced to a bad Ethernet connection. See Jacquie’s blog post in the ISFS wiki for more details.
Soundings – A stiff southerly breeze during the sounding again today. I was able to drain 10 cubic feet of helium out of a tank that had previously been flagged as empty. All the empty tanks on the right side of the trailer are now truly 100% empty. We will continue to check the other cylinders on the left hand side of the trailer for residual amounts of helium.
Finally, I gave my Introduction to CubeSat presentation at a Wasatch High School engineering class for ~25 students as an outreach activity (why should the scientist have all the fun?!?!?)
Another quiet day but with cloudy skies, a southerly breeze in the afternoon, and a high in the low 50's.
ISS1 – All systems still running nominally. Profiler status this morning: @ 0929 100m: 4.63A @ 50V & 1.838A @ 32V, and @0930 150m rass: 3.85A @ 50V & 1.885 A @ 32 V.
ISS2 – No issues again today with all green on the Nagios.
ISFS – Took a look at Sebastian’s 3D sonic to see if it could be mated with one of our tower mounts with no luck. See Jacquie’s ISFS blog entry for pictures and details.
Soundings – A little breezy today during the sounding with a ~10 mph wind out of the SSW. We filled the balloon by working through some of the empty tanks looking for any leftover helium. Most of the tanks were completely drained, though we used the little bit left in two tanks to (slowly) fill the balloon today before attaching the hose to a full tank for the students and the morning launch. There are two tanks on the right hand side of the trailer that are 100% full (blue arrows in image), the second of which I attached the hose to before we left. Additionally, there are two more tanks on the left hand side of the trailer (yellow arrows) that I think were brought in by the U of U folks after the other tanks on that side were depleted. How much helium remaining in those two tanks is unknown. Tomorrow we will continue to check that the empty tanks are 100% depleted when we conduct the afternoon sounding.
