A partly cloudy day with light winds. Sundowner winds are still forecast starting tonight and peaking tomorrow night. The first IOP is scheduled to start Monday morning at 10am with 3 hourly soundings at each site. All ISS are working normally and are ready for the IOP. John flew back to Colorado today, many thanks for his work particularly on the ISS3 915 MHz wind profiler.
Today we mainly worked at the County offices ISS1 site. The major activity was focussing the wind lidar. The focus was previously too far from the lidar (probably had loosened due to vibrations during transport), so Liz adjusted it to to the recommended 1 km range. I attempted a beta reflectivity calibration which involves a series of level PPI sector scans across a uniform backscatter area but will have to check data files to see if it was successful. We also got the USB camera working. It is mounted to the safety frame on the platform with the lidar, and is directed southwest towards the coast to monitor clouds and fog coming in from the sea. Isabel got the CS125 visibility plots and camera images working.
We assisted the UCSB group with their sounding system at a site on the other side of the Fire Department HQ from our site. They had been having problems achieving GPS lock on their radiosondes (a GRAW system) but we found by moving their initialization process outdoors, it went more smoothly.
Liz adjusting the focus on the wind lidar at ISS1 and the UCSB launching a practise sounding nearby.