The Perdigao IOP has begun and we launched the first soundings today. The weather has clear and warm with almost no wind.
We completed setup of the sounding system in it's temporary shelter in the van. Steve Semmer assisted Lou & I raising the 10 meter PAM tower we're using to lift the radiosonde receiver antenna to get a better reception as the balloons drift out of the valley. Ed Creegan rewired our circuit in the power box and our power is more stable now. The first sounding was a launched at 12:20 pm local (12 UTC nominal time) and a second was launched at 6:15pm (18 UTC). The midnight sounding was canceled because the OU, CU, and other systems aren't in place and there weren't assistants available to help launch. The next sounding is scheduled for 6am tomorrow morning.
We don't have a surface met system up yet so surface data were transferred from the sonde. We also don't have the DM computer or network up yet, so data is just being stored locally. The office trailer is due to arrive tomorrow and we will setup the remainder of the system when that is in place. We are using a borrowed Helium regulator however it is very slow so plan to switch over to an alternate regulator tomorrow. We have to share this regulator with other groups, so have ordered more regulators which are due to arrive in about a week.
Emily also made some last minute updates to the NCAS profiler before leaving this afternoon - thanks Emily!
