20m.rel: mote not communicating at all. Tried fuse and port swapping. Cable seems okay. Most likely a connector issue up top. Will need to climb.
20m.lconvt: working
soybeans.lconv: working
grass.uconv: working. HFT and QS were reporting "na" – just needed to create a cal_file.
corn.rel: HFT eaten. Haven't yet replaced.
Our first critter casualty: HFT cable bitten through, cut in 3 pieces. This time, close to the wisard board, so repairable, but still will need to replace. Insulation on TP01 also abraided. Need to come up with a cable protection scheme quick!
Just FYI, on ustar, if you click on full-screen mode with cockpit, the window size seems to flicker by a pixel or two every so often (10s?) for many of the tabs. Every time a window is resized, cockpit erases history. Thus, the effect is to not build up history for most of the dsms. The workaround seems to be to expand the size of the window simply by dragging a corner of the window until the screen is mostly full.
Fairly breezy day, which is bad for the drainage study. Kate and I each got to go vertical today, for a break in the heat. The South Carolina team is still struggling to find solutions for protecting the CTEMPS fiber and for purchasing a new laser.
To respond to yesterday's task list:
- trh.15m.lconv and trh.20m.lconv were missing the SHTs themselves, as we suspected. Installed SHT sensors and now working.
- while working on lconv, attached extension USB cables to the dusttracks.
- trh.10m.init: bad values for T and RH. (SHT was loose within Gortex shield.). Replaced entire SHT (easier to do when climbing), which fixed.
- csat.10m.uconv: Just did ddn/dup which "autoconfigured" it to the correct data rate
- csat/irga.1.5m.lconv, IRGA not turning green. This EC100 was probably always just for the CSAT3A and might never have been used with an IRGA. (It didn't have a PTB100 barometer, though it has a note inside saying that it had been there. Thus, I suspect that its IRGA control settings were off. I replaced this with another EC100, not changing either the CSAT3A or EC150 heads, and get 3 green LEDs now.
The Pantech modem, providing internet access to ustar, disconnected from the network this afternoon. Bypassed it by connecting ustar's Cradlepoint to the ISS Cradlepoint, sharing cell bandwidth now with ISS. We will think about whether there is a better solution, and try to figure out why the Pantech died in the first place.
P.S. By corrupting git, data from the surface rad/soil sensors are coming in, though all 3 Tsoil probes are reporting totally bad data. Not sure of the cause yet. Next will be to acquire the power monitor data.
A short day, as Kate and I visited the Univ. of Ill. Dept. of Atmos. Sci. in the morning to deliver RELAMPAGO cell modems to Steve Nesbitt, and talk to Francina.
Cloud during the day, though still hot and humid, with a downpour in the evening just as we left. Hopefully, everything was secured to water – we checked DSM Bulgin caps, closed the vent in the SODAR trailer, and covered the tubs still remaining in the pickup.
In our half day, just went through cockpit to identify issues and fix the low-hanging fruit:
- trh.0,2m.rel: data are bonkers, with T=-61, RH=0. Turned out that the SHT was loose inside the Gortex shield. Reseated SHT and started working.
- trh.10m.init: exactly the same issue. Will climb tomorrow to fix.
- csat.10m.uconv: was plugged into the wrong port (usb4 rather than usb6). Fixed, but data only coming in at 1sps. Need to reconfigure sampling rate.
- csat/irga.1.5m.lconv: was not getting power. Swapping cables with the csat.3m blew the power front panel's 1A fuse. Changed power bank and was able to bring everything up, though the EC150 LED never went green. Next step is to replace the EC150 head. I think we have a spare.
- trh.15m.lconv and trh.20m.lconv. Should be getting power and jumpers set to RS232, but no data or response to commands. I suspect that the SHTs were not installed in the housings. We'll check this tomorrow as well.
I did find some cockpit plot range issues, that I fixed, and others that I didn't (don't know why not).
No mote or power monitor data are getting through to cockpit yet. I'll work on that tomorrow as well.
Actually, all of this is pretty minor for such a complex deployment! I note that 3 of the 5 sensor issues are with the TRHs that we never checked during staging.
Today:
- installed rad and soils in corn at rel, plugged into rel.a1, USB7. There are a few bits of nearby corn plants that are higher than the radiometer, even mounted as high as I dared on the 10' Rohn tower section.
- took a long break with a telecon and lunch
- added NR01 in soybeans at lconv
- installed rad and soils in grass at uconv, plugged into a2, USB7. THIS COMPLETES SENSOR INSTALLATION!
- Did some ATV moving of PI equipment
- Cleaned our sites of extraneous stuff
- Starting sensor status, seeing a bunch of stuff
- uconvm, lconv1, lconvt needed ddn/dup to appear in cockpit
- still 10m csat3 on uconvm is not responding
- lots of cockpit scales need to be set (easy addition to .xml)
- 10m csat3 on lconvm is reporting bad data
- 6m init csat3 in bad cycle mode (needs a head swap – our last spare (we had one other bad already))
- ...and I'm sure there's more
- A visit to storage with a few things
Tonight:
- make obvious .xml edits, push to git
Tomorrow:
- Kate and I are going to visit UI Atmos. Sci. in the morning to visit Steve Nesbit and Francina
- ansible push from git (I'll have to lookup the command)
- cable clean-up
- address the inevitable sensor data issues
- clean up the base and start working out of it
Last bits of set-up continue, PI's laser and CTEMPS fiber are still out of commission, so there isn't an urgency for us to finish.
Today:
- Installed all sensors on aux towers. One CSAT head (S/N 2048) didn't turn "green", so replaced with 1007 (uconv.a1).
- Began to clean up the aux tower cable mess, but a quite a bit more to go.
- Added an extension to the 9.3m CSAT cable at lconv. (You can relax now, Gary.)
- Installed soil sensors and rad tripod in the soybeans at lconv, hooked up to lconv.a2, port 7. TRH booms didn't fit the tripod U-bolt mount, so purchased smaller stock tonight in town.
- My intent now is to install a rad tripod in the grass at uconv (the most exposure for the radiometers to grass) and install a 10' rohn in the corn at rel (into rel.a1 port 7).
- Plugged in power monitor to lconvt. Will have to move a battery box at rel to connect the usb cable to pmon there.
- Created a new CSAT box tower in the storage locker.
- Had a great lunch at the Chinese place beside the Mahomet Ace hardware.
Plan for tomorrow:
- add radiometer and boom to lconv beans
- install rad/soils in grass at uconv
- install rad/soils in corn at rel
- maybe move lconv 6m particle counter to other tower face, though isn't terrible where it is.
- Organize the base trailer (though getting better already, as we've moved things out and Gary hung the monitor).
- start looking at data! (I expect to see <some> problems).
Yesterday had the shift change from set-up to (almost) operations. Dan, Kurt, Isabel, and Ned are now gone, with Gary leaving tomorrow. Kate and I now have the comm.
Winds have been stronger than desired, so no IOPs, which is good since several things are not yet operational. Chief among these is the CTEMP fiber-optic temperature sensor, which has had several issues and at the moment is only half laid out. There also is an issue with the scanning laser system. All of these are being resolved.
Thanks to the set-up crew, we have the primary 4 towers and the 6 pressure towers all up and running, though with several things to go:
- P4's network connection drops daily, perhaps caused by dew accumulation on the plants. We can try adding another Ubiquiti to lconv to service this tower.
- All of the PI sensors are now mounted on the towers. One (lconv.6m) needs to be reoriented and another (uconv.3m) needs to be secured.
- The aux towers are now all up, with DSMs hung on them, but have not been instrumented, The cabling from them also needs to be dressed. This is our task for tomorrow
- None of the surface-level radiometers or soil sensors have been installed. This is another task for as soon as possible.
- ustar is receiving data from all sites through the network, displaying cockpit, and computing statistics that are sent to Boulder. It is installed in an (unairconditioned) ISS trailer on site, so we are using a second system in the base trailer, just connected to the network through a cell modem. We haven't yet spent much time with this system.
- After that come some lower priority tasks:
- Get R webplots running in Boulder. Due to the network status here, we don't think it will be useful to run a "shadow" set of web plots created on site.
- Change nidas configuration to put lconv soybean radiometer/soils into .a2
- Change nidas configuration to grab power monitor values. Attach USB cables to some power monitors (several are missing them).
Now that I've left I should probably post what I did the last couple days and what still needs to be done.
Yesterday Kurt and Ned powered up the tall towers and we worked on making sure DSMs are staged approximately where the aux towers will be put up, and that sensor cables are all in the correct ports. The idea was to have everything on, collecting data, and on the network, even if the aux towers aren't up yet. Some other site-specific things I noted while doing this:
Lconv
- Ned decided to switch which aux tower is on which side of the gully from what the diagrams show, so the extra tower can be in soybeans instead of corn.
- lconv2 dsm was not reachable despite being powered on and connected over ethernet to the network. Gary says he replaced a fuse there today, but it looks like it is still not reachable now.
Uconv
- I took the long ethernet cables from the station box to use for lconv, so we will need to bring some from the box of networking spares in the base trailer to finish setting up networking.
Rel
- I had to extend some sensor cables to reach the dsms approximately where the aux towers will be. I didn't have the labeling tape so some of the extended cables aren't labeled, but they are all in the correct ports.
- I mounted the spare nano in place of the nano that had been packed in the station box, since that one didn't have any mounting hardware. It's mounted and plugged in but I didn't note the serial number. I also didn't have any plastic tubing with me so the nano still needs to be connected to the quad port.
- Rel2 was missing one of the screws that holds the metal shelf with the pi mounted on it inside the dsm, I replaced it.
The ubiquiti network is up, with the omnidirectional antenna on the release tower. Out of the sites in the field, only P1 and P4 don't have line of sight to the release tower. The link to p4 works fine when the antenna at p4 is pointed through the trees to where the rel tower is, and I expect this will also be the case at p1. If it isn't, we have spare ubiquitis in the base trailer and could establish a relay on lconv, since I think p1 has line of sight to that at least. The link to the base trailers does not work, I'm assuming because line-of-sight goes directly through a barn. There's a faint possibility that setting up a relay to somewhere else at the homestead site (e.g. the tree between Ken's house and the road) could fix this, but I don't think that would be worth the hassle.
Weather: Scattered cumulus and comfortable temperatures
Tasking for 09/12:
- Instrumented Initiation Tower
- Powered Initiation Tower
- Powered Release Tower
- Installed P1 save for power
Tomorrow we will continue with the punchlist items on the pressure, 10m & 20m towers.
Weather: Cumulus and comfortable temperatures for the past couple of days. The swale continues to dry out and firm up.
Tasking for 09/10 & 09/11:
- (09/10)- Installed P2, P3 & P4 sites
- (09/10)- Determined location for Aux Towers and solar panels
- (09/10)- Staged power infrastructure at prospective final locations
- (09/11)- Instrumented Release Tower
- (09/11)- Continued to clean out Penske for return on Friday
Tomorrow we plan on instrumenting the Initiation Tower and begin powering the 10m & 20m towers.
Weather: The rest of Gordon passed us early this morning leaving us with some cool and dry conditions. Stratocumulus throughout the day.
Tasking for 09/09:
- Installed P6
- Installed P5
We are now playing a waiting game for the swale to dry out. Hopefully we will be able to drive a vehicle in on Tuesday to resume the outfitting of the 10m & 20m towers. Until then, we will focus on pressure and aux towers.
Weather: Heavy rain throughout the day
Tasking for 09/07:
- Rented storage unit and filling with excess infrastructure and empty instrument cases
- Setup base trailer (leveled, set up porch, terminated power)
With well over an inch of rain already and more on its way, we will not be able to drive into the swale for a couple of days. Tomorrow may be a down day due to weather.
Weather: Low stratus early, transitioning to altostratus, nimbostratus and cumulus throughout the afternoon
Tasking for 09/06:
- Re-tensioned and plumbed both 20m towers
- Outfitted Lower Convergence Tower with all ISFS sensors 5m and above
- Removed all vehicles from swale (save for the ATV)
Tomorrow's forecast calls for thunderstorms and more than an inch of rain as the remnants of Gordon move through the area. We plan to avoid driving through the swale to minimize damage to the inevitable soft ground.
Weather: Hot and humid, scattered cumulus and cumulonimbus throughout both days
Issues:
- Began final plumbing of Lower Convergence Tower yesterday. Discovered slight rocking in concrete blocks upon full tension which made it impossible to properly plumb tower.
Tasking for 09/04 & 09/05:
- (09/04)- Blocks were not fully buried when rocking issue was discovered. Reduced tension on all guy wires for 20m towers to allow blocks to resettle
- (09/04)- Buried blocks with packed dirt
- (09/05)- Added a screw anchor and ratchet strap to the back side of the block to act as a safety if tamped dirt is insufficient
- (09/05)- Instrumented Upper Convergence Tower