It's raining. Port-a-potty delivery received yesterday, will be
serviced no more frequently than weekly. Helium received today.
Expecting radio modems from fedex today.
Site map and photographs completed by Lou and Bill.
================
Phone and internet access:
Land-line Qwest service:
Greg from Qwest visited yesterday, looked for phone drops nearby and thought
closest to be several tenths of a mile away, so he referred our service request
to an engineer. The engineer called back yesterday and spoke with Lou.
Engineer's estimate was that project would require trenching and burying a
phone line across National Forest land costing several thousand dollars, not
to mention the project wouldn't finish before the project had ended. It
rained yesterday too.
Satellite internet access:
Yesterday I called Paratech in Bend OR about satellite internet
access, asking for estimates on both a lease and permanent purchase of
equipment and service. We are waiting to hear back from Nancy
(541-389-1514). They resell Starband (www.starband.com). A quick
check of their web site indicates about $400 for equipment, $200
installation, and $80 a month for service, but a one year contract is
required. That is still within the $1500 communications budget for
this site, and it would give us high-speed, continuous internet
access, about 256k. One possible hitch is that Starband explicitly
says it will not work with Linux, Unix, and Mac, only Windows. There
is software (WinProxy) available for purchase to let a Windows host
act as a router/gateway for small home networks. The ideal drop-in
replacement, though, would be something we could just attach to the
trailer network.
Another satellite service provider is DirecWay (formerly DirectPC I
think) from Hughes. I have a request for information in to them but
do not know anythin else nor if they have any local distributors.
Freewave radio modems:
This morning I talked to the local ranger station (Sisters Ranger
District, 541-549-7700) about possible communication sites. Five Mile
Butte is within a few miles of the site, in line of sight, and has
electrical power and three existing facilities. I spoke with Tucker
Williamson, Resident Forester with Willamette Industries, the
landowner, and we have his permission to set something up with one of
the operators of the three facilities. He only asks that we keep him
informed of what we do: 503-829-7550.
One of the facilities is owned by Black Butte Ranch, so
we're waiting for a call back from Dale Larson (541-595-1287) to find
out if they have phone access up there. If that is not an option,
then maybe there is a site on Black Butte Ranch at which they could
give us power and a phone hookup and access for an outside antenna.
The other two facilities are owned by cellular phone companies, so
they could be possibilities but would be harder to work with.
Cell-phone modem:
Gordon has generously taken the lead on this so far. He's talked with
Mary, and Mary is getting details from Verizon for us. We'd need
another cell phone to dedicate to this site, a data kit for that
phone, and activation for the data service. We expect we'll need to
scale back the amount of data to in light of the 9600 baud rate.
Profiler Processing
===================
I installed Cory's latest NIMA CD, Research Version 2.2. We've run it
successfully on both the 3-beam and 5-beam modes Bill has been
experimenting with. NIMA does not handle mode changes, so we had to learn
to use the -start option to skip past the initial fluctuations in modes
when Bill first started setting up POP.
The serial moments from POP and being ingested on the Sun and SOAP is
generating plots successfully. The ingestor (popserial) has been
upgraded at this site; this version keeps track of the maximum number
of heights seen and fills a single file with space for maximum heights
rather than writing a new file for every height change. This
drastically cuts down the load on zebra and SOAP caused by accessing
lots of small files containing only a few moments profiles each.
Soundings
=========
Lou is working on a sounding test flight.
A link to the raw class file directory (/data_source/class) has been
added to the data transfer "staging" directory (/data_source/send) so
that D* GLASS files will be included in the data transfer back to ATD,
if we ever get internet access. SPOL wants the D files for input into
the particle type program.
Surface
=======
Surface sensors have all been setup and everything appears to be
operating, ingesting, and displaying correctly.
=====================
CLASS LAUNCH LOG version:951116
=====================
=========>> Enter data after all colons (:) <<===========
1. Clone the original sounding log file.
2. Enter information before launch.
3. Enter post-termination data.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Use arrows to navigate, NO CARRIAGE RET, except in comments + wx descriptions!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SITE INFO
---------
Site Name:
date yymmdd:
launch time UTC:
Sonde coef tape #:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MET INFO
-------- For Sonde
Pressure mb :
Temp C :
RH % :
For Surface Data
Pressure mb :
Temp C :
RH% :
Wind Spd m/s :
Wind Dir deg :
Pre-Launch Note conditions not observable by automatic systems
Weather Description ( visibility, sea state, cloud coverage and cloud type,
rain, virga, etc. )
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
POST TERMINATION
----------------
Termination Pressure mb :
Termination Altitude km :
Reason for Termination :
Post-Termination Weather Description:
For Surface Data
Pressure mb :
Temp C :
RH % :
Wspd m/s :
Wdir deg :
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENTS (data quality, unusual meteorolical features, launch problems, etc.)
--------