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.