CuPIDO: Site 4 Messages, 15 Entries..

A.J.I. and Steve S. arrived at 14:11 and left at 14:21

Activities:
- Replaced TRH
- Rnet looked clean

Replaced TRH at 14:25.

Performed 1 test tip of rain gauge at 13:07.

Cleaned Rnet at 1:05.

A.J.I. and Steve O. arrived at 1:03, and left at 1:11

Activities:
- Cleaned Rnet at 1:05
- 1 test tip at 1:07

Any rain tips from 10:30 to 12:00 MST, Aug 3 were human caused...

Aug 3, 10:40 MST  Cleaned net radiometer

Battery voltage plot of site 4 has indicated problems in the
charging circuit for the past two days. 

Arrived at site, 10:30 MST

Cleaned net radiometer.

Battery voltage 12.4 V
Measured 18 V from solar panel at charge controller.

Eventually pulled controller out of box:

Pro-Star 30, has a digital display:

Batt : 12.5 V
Array   0.0 A
Load    0.3 A

Found a loose (blackened) ground connection to charger board,
and tightened screw:

Batt  12.9 V
Array  3.0 A
Load   0.3 A

Swapped usb disk.

Installed ntpq program.  Shows offset 4.376 msec, jitter 88.9 msec
(GPS without PPS)

Installed latest nidas code.

Other info:  GOES 110, not grounded.

Data box #14

Shored up electric fence.

Tested rain gauge: 2 tips

Left 12:00

The net radiometer at station 4 failed at 0100 local time, July 21.
Gordon repaired the cow-chewed net radiometer cable removed on July 20
and I replaced the domes (one had been dented, likely in transit).
We returned it to station 4 at 1500, July 22.  The net radiometer on the 
station again had a chewed cable, but looked like small incisor damage
rather than molar damage.  Electric fence still intact and Gordon tested it
successfully by grabbing both the ground rod and the fence.

We also swapped the USB data drive.

Station 4 – Web plots down – rebel cattle incursion and destructive activities

Purpose: With the web plots down we sought to bring the station back up

Time: 1445pm arrival 1745 departure.

Upon inspection we noted that cattle had wrought havoc with the electric fence 
(taking down about 1/5th of the fencing, had knocked over the GOES transmitter 
cooler, and had chewed through the green cable to the logger and the GOES, 
as well as the gray cable to the precip and net rad sensors! In addition, 
with exposed wires and rains the previous day, the fuses had blown to both 
GOES and the logger. John took pictures.

The electric fence was reset on the posts and tightened successfully. Initially
it did not work because the fence wire was touching cactus with good contact. 
After eliminating that contact the fence began working rather well and will 
hopefully prevent future incursions by the rebel cattle outlaws of Lone Hill.

The only data lost was that from the logger-based rain gauge and net radiation 
sensors. We should be able to discern whether the weather or the cattle hit 
the system first by looking at the locally archived data.

Fuses were replaced for ttyS5 and ttyS3 (GOES in port 13)

Cables were replaced with spares or mended. The GOES system was moved out from 
under the solar panel and duct taped to prevent future water entry 
(… duct tape on the remaining coolers at other stations is advised …). 
This was done because the replacement green cable was not long enough to reach 
the previous position and the spare cabling (left over gray cabling from the 
hot-film at T-REX did not have the CTS wire).

The Net Rad sensors was changed out completed with a spare (the cable to the 
earlier NRad will need to be fixed).

Q94125 – Cal values entered in logger from plate on sensor – 
positive 8.75, neg 10.84.

The old hot-film special cable was used to power the logger (two Bulgins were 
taped at their junction to reach).

The precip cable was re-worked to good cable (it had been chewed near the gauge and had enough length to keep using).

On data drive exchange the usb-drive did not properly unmount, or upon reboot 
it give errors in mount. However, the data system and data archiving was fine 
despite these errors. A future visit might seek to fix this.

12Jul06, 14:15-18:40

Purpose: Station Reporting has been down / internittent

Data System:
	Data was still being collected locally: swapped usbdisks
	Stored log files in:
	/data/projects/CuPIDO/logs/
	e_adamlog_071206.txt and e_sysmessages_071206.txt 
	These were actually grabbed before doing much of the following,
	however should be examined.

Goes:	Observed 1 transmit then 2 missed per wattmeter!
	Rebooted data system while recovering local storage (and logs);
	then
	Observed 1 transmit then 2 missed per wattmeter; same!
	did notice some IO exceptions in logs
	Swapped transmitters:
		SE110 1005
		SE110 1006 in (same unit from st7 previously)
	Observed 1 transmit then 2 missed per wattmeter; same!
	did notice some IO exceptions in logs
	Installed newest software / rebooted:
	Observed continuous transmissions.

Implication: is that the newest (test SE110 model with 242 bytelen)
	may be the solution but not the prev. (test SE110 model with 244
	bytelen).   Both version of this software include Gordon's 'late
	message into statsproc fix.'

Recommendation:
	add more log messages that indicate 'goes xmit handshake is ok'
	or otherwise.x

Antenna:	Was loose and ~10-15deg off in both az/el....ie bad.
	Had a fair challenge getting this re-aimed correctly and locked down.

Goes Box Drilled:
	Speculation that transmitters are getting too hot in the very
	recent 105+ weather, I widened the holes in the cooler and glued
	in 2" pvc elbows which made nice cable feed throughs.  They may
	still allow some rain to splash in but shouldn't be very much,
	while allowing a small amount of ventillation.
	Raised box 1-2" above ground.

Rnet:	Cleaned

Gordon's new software was installed and the 512Mb USB was exchanged (first exchange at st 4 of the experiment) - at approximately 1145 LT. This data was synched on Aster this evening.

2 weep holes were drilled in the lower plate corners of the electronics box.

Net rad sensor was leveled (it was not too far off).

The GOES set up was checked at Station 4, where strange behaviour had been noted before operations. There was between 5 and 10 mm of water in the cooler but because the cooler was tilted the transmitter was mostly dry. It appears that water, via capillary action, curls under the lid and accumulates in these coolers (all sites now have holes drilled, except Site 9.

Holes were drilled in the cooler to drain it and the xmitter was elevated on some flat rocks. A rock was placed on top as well. 

This site has an SE110 xmitter (Serial# 1007) and antenna #8 (square).

At 1200 LT the a new boom angle (78 degrees) was entered into the RMY. This replaced the previous value of 74.