rabbit, rabbit, rabbit

High overcast with wind in the morning, just a few sprinkles

Onsite: Matt, Mack, Steve

(This being written at noon, while the morning's activities are fresh):

• Replaced t0 batteries, but found that the Victron wasn't pulling any power from the solar panels (despite measuring 40V open circuit).  Solved by replacing the Victron.  Strange!
• Went down the entire line, setting Victron battery type to LiFePO4.  Also did firmware upgrades, so all are now at 2.44/1.61.  Halfway through, started checking load setting, which should be "Battery Life".  Found one at "Always On", that I changed.
• Mack and Chenning worked on the DTS power.  Found that one solar panel connector only had 2 pins (not 4), hence strange solar inputs in the past.  This connector is now not being used.  Mack is now using 2 Victrons in parallel to charge the batteries, with each Victron powered by 3 panels in parallel (none in series anymore).  One test found that the DTS startup current is 66A (Mack has a digital clamp-on meter).  They are going to try a total rewire using thicker gauge cable.
• Matt spent the morning rescanning tt, now that we extended the 7m boom (and moved the TRH up by 5.2cm).
• I added the 4th hotfilm, so all should be running now.  Now that I think about it, not having power at t0 (and thus the LabJack), probably explains why ustar was restarting hotfilm data collection last night.

Later:

• Matt continued scans, after moving the Leica to the west end of the array
• Hotfilms: 2m was a short, 4m was open circuit, so no data from either.  2m short was in the probe support (again – the other probe support fixed itself in the base).  This is quite strange, since it was working last night until the power died.  Swapping in the (only) spare support fixed it.  4m was harder.  The SF4 probe is dead.  It was good in Boulder.  Now 2 spares for the project.  Still had an open circuit after swapping in SF5.  Turned out to be the 32IN BNC cable.  Now CTA 32 is being supplied by the 33IN cable (but still uses the 32OUT cable to the LabJack).  To appease those that come later, I think it is time to relabel things 0.5m, 1m, 2m, 4m.  I'll try to get to this tomorrow.
• Mack and Chenning now have the (AC) UPS on the DTS system, which seems to eliminate the large surges.  I think this means that it is running again and actually getting charged well.  Mack may want to write more on this.