dynamo-iss3: IMPORTANT Messages: 9 Entries..

Four straight balloon launches (two at 03z, one at 06z, one at 09z) have now experienced an very strange problem.  All signals are lost from the sonde at a point no higher than about 700 mb, then the signal reappears between 400 and 300 mb, and then disappears again somewhere around 200-150 mb, only to reappear again during descent after balloon burst.  I've sent a few emails to Bill detailing what I've seen, and I've also logged them in the daily entry "launches" section for today, 11 Nov 2011.  After it happened on the original launch as well as the relaunch for the 03z sounding, I decided it was best not to relaunch sondes at any other sounding time until the source of this mysterious problem is found.

At approximately 0015Z it was noted that the RASS was running continuously and the display on the profiler computer was only showing the warning that the RASS was about to start. This continued for well over the normal 5 minutes. Nagios was checked and the profiler did have a critical message. I restarted the profiler computer and clicked on the iss4 shortcut on the desktop. The profiler is now showing its usual display and countdown and data is showing up on the ISS display. RASS started again and ran at a normal interval.

GAUS froze up after terminating the 09Z sounding on 18 October 2011. Terminated because it lost signal (for about a minute or two) and was around 30-50 mb. Still had control of the tabs in the sounding window after confirming termination of channel, but window to select "Good Sounding" never came up, and none of the buttons were click-able in the bottom panel.

Files are still present on GAUS machine under GAUSdata/DG_20111018/, and I created backup files in a directory on the desktop.

DIEGO GARCIA METOC VISIT

Visited Diego Garcia meteorological station "METOC" at the airport.

They in the process of upgrading their radar and it should be operating in the
next week.   The radar is an SWR C-Band radar and should be recording level-2
data in .uf format shortly.  It may be possible for Dynamo to access this data.

Their surface met AWOS station is having problems and they are currently only
getting winds data from that.  
Their Temp/RH is from hourly observations of a hand-held Kestrel sensor 
in their parking lot, and their pressure comes a barometer in their office.  
Clouds obs are visual only and cloud heights are estimated from cloud type.

The iss3 datamanger lost touch with the outside world about two hours ago. The nagios Exposed SSH diagnostic noted this as a parse error to check_ssh :-).

Other computers on the wireless network were able to access the internet at this time.

External access was restored to the datamanger by cycling the power on the Linksys wireless router.

Tim noted the same problem in issue #12.

Addendum by Tim at 12:30am Local. Same problem popped up again, and it may have interferred with the sending of the 1700Z sounding. The Nagios status page will show a "Status Unknown" and on the Exposed SSH service. The remedy is to reboot the Linksys router, and then recheck.

I have repeated this procedure at least 4 times tonight. We seem to have an issue with keeping the data manager connected. The 21z sounding did make it out, but I had to reboot the router just prior, and again within 10 or 20 minutes after, just to verify it was sent.

I believe the internet connection on the data manager has been down for as much as 6 hours. I was verifying that the GTS messages were being sent in Gmail, but could not reach any external web page. This outage did not affect the wireless connection on my computer, just the data manager. After rebooting the router,  I verified that the data manager had access. The Gmail account shows the messages that have been sent by looking at the "sent mail" folder, and the newest message is 6 hours old. (This is written at 4am local) We should routinely look to see if the data manager has internet connectivity is up and verifying data is being sent.

Power was lost island wide from approximately 19:02 to 19:30 including the ISS3 site. Charlie was present, and noted that all UPS's did NOT sustain any computer for any length of time, so all systems shutdown improperly.  All systems were restarted at approximately 20:00 hrs by Tim. No problems encountered, and the 21Z sounding was launched at 20:20 hrs. all systems ok except internet connectivity is still down.

In Epson printer. We now have one set of cartridges remaining.

DYNAMO DIEGO GARCIA ISS3 SET-UP

ISS3 is being set-up at the US Air Force Tent City near Pt Marianne on the
island of Diego Garcia.

The location is:
Lat/Lon 7d 18.8493m S 72d 25.5932m E (7d 18m 50.8s S, 72d 25m 35.3s E) Alt 2m
Tent City area 9700, the trailer is on pad 9703, and the wind profiler is
between pads 9704 and 9705.

The ISS consists of:

LAP3000 915 MHz DBS Boundary Layer Wind Profiler with RASS
GAUS sounding system using Vaisala RS92-SGPD radiosondes
Ceilometer (Vaisala CL31)
10 m met tower : RM Young wind head at 10m, pressure, temp/RH at 2m
Eppy IR and Visible, and net radiation sensors
Tipping bucket rain gauge
WXT 510 Vaisala weather sensor with low-res discrometer function
All-sky camera

The site near the middle of an open flat area approx 200 m across, 
consisting of a number of concrete tent pads and mowed grass.  
Trees (mix of pine & palms 10-15m) flank the site to the east, north and west, 
there are low buildings to the south and south east.  
A few power lines, light poles, and other buildings are scattered around 
the site.  
There is a lagoon just beyond the trees to the northeast (approx 120m from 
the ISS) - so far the profiler doesn't seem to see much wave clutter.
The airport is to the west, closest point is about 200m, however there
seem to be just a few fights per day so little interference or clutter is
expected.

The ISS set-up crew is Bill Brown, Lou Verstraete, Tim Lim and Charlie Martin.