Daily Report for Thursday Oct 3
Fine, warm and brisk southwesterly breeze since this morning. Forecast said a dry cold front is coming through so too breezy and disturbed for an IOP.
449 Profiler working well, apart from a couple of dropped files around 18 & 21Z in both winds and rass. Occasional sound drop-outs. Average amp power 123W. Backup disk installed on DM to copy 449 data (using a Voyager docking station). DVD writing also tested - plan to use this to give lidar data to the ASU folks.
Sodar working very well since Eckhard made a couple of parameter changes yesterday. He reduced the gates to 15m (from 20m) which involved the first gate. He also switched the DBS operation to different beams - was A0 & A1 (SW & NW), now A1 & A2 (NW & NE) which improved the apparent quality of the winds considerably, although the range is a little less thanks to the shorter pulse. Today both winds and rass height ranges are quite variable varying from about 75 to 180m.
The lidar is getting returns out to about 2km range and a km or more altitude. We shut it off during the afternoon to avoid over heating.
WXT was moved to the lidar this morning from around 17Z. Last night it ran between 449 trailer and the surface met tower. A quick comparison shows that the temperature and RH agreed very well (within 1C and ~3%); the pressure and winds were a little higher on the WXT (approx 1hPa and 1m/s) but this could have been due to placement with flow around the trailer (although with the surface met wind head at 40' and the WXT at 6', I would have expected the WXT to be lower).
Generator diesel still showing well above full on dipstick, oil temp 180 F, pressure 60 psi.
Gary is returning home tomorrow, leaving Bill & Tim for the first ops period - thanks Gary!