IMPROVE-II: Site Irish Bend Messages, 23 Entries..

I've shutdown the profiler and will finish teardown in the morning. 

Filled Gen and checked oil. Seems to be leaking some coolant. Out of fuel, had just the perfect amount.	

Walked the sensors and RASS speaks. All seem fine.

Wind profiler shows the winds doing some crazy things and some wild wind shears.

RASS showing some interesting elevated inversions. 

Surface sensors looking good.

Absolutely clear skies today.

There was a heck of an inversion early this morning. 

Prof looks okay, winds changed from the north at the surface and the RH went way high. Even above 100%!!! Still have a little problem with the really high RH values. All other sensors look good. I wish I was more comfortable with the Net rad output.

Fueled the gen at 9 am today. Also the generator was serviced today.	

Sensors okay and RASS speakers seem to be working. I have to do a site walk around. Doing the walk around every thing looks ok. I added zip ties to the turn buckles for the 10m tower. It was starting to come unscrewed. 

Big boss man came through and said it all looks good. Nice to have his company and he pointed out the gust fronts that are easy to see in the surface wind plots. Very interesting.

Weather now is heavy over cast and no rain. I'm outa here!

The evil stuck kermit process was stacked up again so I rebooted. It ssh-d into NCAR fine. I see the last data transfer didn't work though. Will retry it.

For some reason the profiler autorun did not copy the data for the last 2 days. I ran it by pushing the waterfall button and it ran fine. I changed the copy time to 1pm and rebooted the computer. Maybe windows had a glitch. 

Check Rad stand and surface met and both okay, rad stand desicant still okay. RASS speakers all still working. RASS profiles anywhere from 500m to 1km. Seeing some slight inversions.

WP data transfer at 65%. 

Filled generator. 

DATA mail messages indicate the data transfers should be fine. Profiler often seeing up to 5 km+ when fronts pass through and there is what looks to be a dry passage before the front comes through. 

Surface data looks good. Frontal passage from a few days ago had a pressure drop of almost 15mb. 

Heading to Black Butte today. IOP today and probably tomorrow.

All sensors look good. 

Generator filled at 2pm

Today is one big rain event. Winds at the surface up to 15m/s so far. Aloft the winds are up to 40 m/s. Trailer is shaking. Pressure started at 1008mb and dropped below 998mb starting this morning. It appears to be turning back up now. Having problems getting the sondes launched in Black Butte. Too much wind.

Wind profiler is at 58% disk full. Should be fine for a while. The Black Butte profiler is at 81% and will need filled soon.

Yesterday I check the system and found communications hung. One of the Kermit processes froze and would not release the modem. With Gary's help the system was rebooted and that seems to have fixed the problems. All emails seem to indicate data sends are happening with out a problem.

Today so far no problems. Filled the generator, all data is transfering. 


The night was clear at about 10 pm when I went to bed, but over night it got cloudy and started to rain. The IOP was called off because it was a wimpy front, but there is a chance of another IOP tomorrow. 

Spent time this morning helping out the UW student Stan Rose and Lee, the navel observer with their GPS sonde launching. They were not getting any ground stations. It seems like their cable has a little problem. THe light on the MWG card inside the rack only flashed red. Some jiggling and the light seemed to turn green too. Ned says the number of green flashes between single red flashes indicates how my sats are tracked on the ground. Everything seemed to work fine afterwards.

Yes, many things happening today. OPS

Weather is not raining, but increasing cloud cover. There are operations happening and soundings at the BB site. Larry is doing the early soundings and Matt is taking over for the later soundings. 

I adjusted the clutter removal, see radar entry. Operator error with RASS too.

Checked the radiation stand and sensors seem to be fine. Opened the desicant section of net rad and found it grey and needing changing. Probably the same for total and if there is some I will change it. If it wasn't changed at setup it should be changed. Need to make a note to Lou. All 3 sensors have it changed today here.

While checking out the radiation stand I noticed a mouse with it's skin and front legs chewed off. Only the head left and the lower half with skin/fur on it. A bloody mess, interesting.

Also while standing at the stand I heard a flurry of gun shots in the distance at the farm house or in the woods next to it. Something got shot a bunch of times, but I hope it isn't a problem and I'm glad they missed me!!! Maybe just warning shots for us gobment people. 

Weather is getting more increasingly cloudy. System must be moving into place. Still possible to see the sun far to the south.

I looked at the clutter removal and the height was set to 2 hts. I spoke with Bill yesterday and he said he did not adjust it and gave me the okay to change it. I set it to abou 1.2 km at both sites. It need seems to fit the site as there is clutter up around those areas, though maybe it could be set higher. 

RASS is going off for some reason and it's 17:46 and not on the half hour. I half to see how the consensus period is set. How odd. 

RASS has gone off 3 times now for short periods. THe consensus time at the top of the profiler page says consensing for 5 minutes... odd. It just shut down again. This might require rebooting.

I think I actually hit a 2 when changing to F2 screen putting a 2 minute consensus on the F4 screen. The next entry after clutter removal is consensus time. My bad. Things should be working now.

All speakers are working.

Profiler appears to be working correctly, but increasing clutter removal to 2 km= 20 hts. No rain today to cover up the clutter. 

Checked the antenna to see if it is still level. Bubble inside the dual lines for both planes. Antenna still appears level inside specifications.

why is it drizzling all day every day.

NIMA computer hung in the screen saver, did a hard boot.

Why is the wind profiler computer set for only 2 hts for 
the clutter removal? 

Filled the generator 12-6-01 @ 5pm

Checked the aspirator

radiation sensors

wp data reporting, but the NIMA computer was hung in screen
saver mode. Cycled the power. Lou says the NIMA stuff automatically
runs when the computer is booted. 

all 4 rass speakers working, surface station running.

Rass was off from 11:30am til 4pm because of generator servicing.Everything else seems ok.

Land owner: Leland Kropf
            541-995-9216 or 541-409-0480

Our phone is in red barn on Steve Zehr's property to the north of the site.
             Steve Zehr
             27027 Irish Bend Loop
             541-369-3529 or 541-369-2603
  our number is 541-369-2983

Phone Company : Roome Telecommunications
                541-369-2211

Generator: United Rentals
           Robert Daiker  541-451-1713

     Service Manager   Scott:  541-465-1235
  N.B.Mike has to call and give them his phone number
      They are supposed to call 24 hr in advance of serviceing. So far they call      ed same morning.
      Generator needs to be serviced every 240 hrs.You can attemp to can around       that time and arrange to have someone come out when you can be at system.

Oil Company : Townsend Oil
               Jan Townsend 541-258-6747
              If you call for more fuel make sure you tell them it is for the 
               Halsey site and keep track of how much is delivered so PO can 
              be amended.
 

Irish Bend site does not have a sounding system. Everything appears to be working fine today. I managed to break tklog and rebooted the system at approx 19:20z
Generator was filled today.

The generator has been restarted evedently it ran out of fuel. The fuel guages are not to be trusted. The generator company said the the small tank holds 15-20 gallons of fuel and the large tank holds 40.They said it burns 2 gallons per hour no matter what the load. So this would only give us approx 27 hours between fueling. This is not really agreeing with what I'm seeing. I satarted the generator approx 8 hours ago and the small tank still appears half full.This would mean that when I topped up at 16z on the 25 th the generator would have stopped at approx 23z on the 26th. When I returned to the system at 22z on the 29th the ups would half been running the SUN and surface met for 3 days.
I toped both tanks at 0z on Dec1 will check tomorrow to see what has been used.
After 24 hrs the small tank was just about empty. After 48 hrs the large tank was reading half full. What I beleive is hyappening is the large tanks guage sticks between 3/4 and full once you run it below that it seems to work. Anyway the company is wrong on the consumption rate.
 **** The generator will run fine for 48hrs and still have some left . It might even make 72 hrs but that would be pushing it to a very fine edge.

The final amp was replaced at approx 20:00z today . The system has been running fine since then.

System started Sun 11-25-01 20:30z. Appears that the Profiler died sometime arond 4-5pm local time on Monday. The power meter on the front on the RX/TX box was reading only 007. Checked all cables for shorts etc and for power to final amp. 
Put oscope on and could not see 60mhz pulse. Working over the phone with Mike can to the conclusion that most likly that there was a problem with the final amp . He will fedex ISS1 final amp to me.

Setup done.

PROFILER:
Not getting great RASS coverage so turned up volume slightly (~17UT)
output at amp now about 15.8VAC, slight improvement 
(now range increased about 100m to 600m).
Copied data to maprlab, then deleted on profiler pc.
TXI current   RASS 890, Winds high mode 1653, low mode off scale.
Shutdown profiler about 18:40 UT, rest of system soon after.

SURFACE:
Okay, except funnel on rain guage blew off last night, fixed.

No major problems during setup.
A relatively minor issue is the proximity to the road (Lake Creek Dr.).
The trailer had to be sited close to the road to keep on firm ground;
it's just north of the road which runs east-west.
The solar sensors were placed just 22 m from the road, about as
far back as possible and yet still not get shadows from the trailer
or the met. tower.
Hopefully mist, grime, or small stones from trucks won't be a problem.
Fortunately the road is very quiet, probably only couple of cars per hour.

Lou said some goats were sheep, & Gary learned to use power strips.

PROFILER
 
MODE: For ops plan to run in 3 beams with low and high modes,
plus RASS (unlike Sisters site).

Site flat with very little clutter.  Nearest trees about 800m away,
and nearest house about 900m away.
RASS just audible in car with an open window at 700m, (5C inversion
at the time).

ANTENNA ORIENTATION:
Looking along X37 side is 106d, ie. x-nor (37) is 16 deg (E of N)
(Corrected for magnetic dec of +17d).
Azimuths xvert 196, yvert 106, x+sou 196, y-wes 286, x-nor 16, y+eas 106 
 
TEST MODE
Nov 18 0:45UT to Nov 19 21:30 running in 5 beam mode 
(low with 1 vert only high) to test for clutter.

OPERATIONS MODE
Nov 19, 21:46 on,  3 beam mode (low & high) with rass.

POP PARAMETER SETS:
 
Parameter Set 1:
IPP 58, PW 700, Code 4, Nhgts 48, DLY 2000, Space 700,  CohAv 70,
SpAv 30, Npts 128, Scale 20.2 m/s, Dwell 20s, Hgt .14 - 5.07 km,
IPP 8.13 km, Pulse 105 m.
 
Parameter Set 2:
IPP 90, PW 1700, Code 2, Nhgts 40, DLY 3900, Space 1700,  CohAv 44,
SpAv 30, Npts 128, Scale 20.7 m/s, Dwell 20s, Hgt .33 - 10.27 km,
IPP 12.83 km, Pulse 255 m.

Beams (beam name, parameter set)  (all NRep 1) :
yvert 1, xvert 1, y+eas 1, x+sou 1, xvert 2, y+eas 2, x+sou 2

Parameter Set 4 (RASS):
IPP 20, PW 400, Code 0, Nhgts 25, DLY 1800, Space 400,  CohAv 10,
SpAv 24, Npts 2048, Scale 409.6 m/s, Dwell 30s, Hgt .12 - 1.56 km,
IPP 2.68 km, Pulse 60 m.
Temp range:  -5C to 20C   SRC range: -10C to 25C
Amplifier output 13.2 VAC



RESULTS FROM 5 BEAM TEST
Nima clutter algorithm found:
   yvert had more clutter than xvert
         (yvert peaked at ~800m at ~17dB compared with ~3dB for xvert)
   y-wes had more clutter than y+eas 
         (y-wes peaked at ~800m at ~18dB compared with ~5dB for y+eas)
   x-nor and x+sou very little clutter although x-nor had a little more
         noise than x+sou
Selected y+eas, x+sou, and xvert beams for 3 beam mode.

ISS 2 setup at Irish Bend has been completed, for the most part.  Lou
and I head back to iss3 tomorrow to address comms problem.  Bill
remains behind to finish tuning the profiler.

Setup got started Saturday morning with a bang.  We saw the truck
drive right past us on its way to the wrong meeting place.  As we
arrived at the site, the oil delivery was waiting for us and the
generator arrived before the truck had backed the trailer in.  The
field is in good shape, not too soft.  Weather has been fine.  A
little cold, very foggy mornings, but only light precipitation.  This
afternoon was actually sunny and quite pleasant.

Profiler and RASS
-----------------

See Bill's log entry.

Surface
----------------

No problems with surface setup.  Everything appears to be operating
and ingesting correctly.  See Bill's log entry.

GLASS
----------------

No GLASS for this site.

Internet Access
----------------

The phone company (RTI) had our service scheduled for Monday, but we
agreed to pay the double time and have the line installed on Saturday.
Steve Zehr is the owner of the residence on which the phone line is
installed.  Both he and KT from the phone company have been very
cooperative.  The line was installed by Saturday afternoon.  There was
a convenient pipe along the side of the barn on which to mount the
freewave antenna, and an unused part of a wood shop in which we placed
our modems (inside a plastic tub).

After some initial problems with freewave interference from the
profiler, I finally found the 911-919 avoid hop table and set both
modems to use it.  We first tried positioning the antenna several
places, but that never seemed to make much difference.  So right now
the antenna is on its own short tower, pointing away from the
profiler, but the hop table seems to have made the most difference.
The connection seems very stable, and two data transfers so far have
succeeded.  Data transfers have been set to happen every hour.

Spiders
----------------

The grass field contains a huge population of very active, small
spiders.  Within 30 minutes of setting up equipment they had spun webs
across it.  Looking across the grass in the direction of the sun
revealed a fine floating surface of webs delicately laced across the
tips of the grass.  The webs shimmer and flow like soothing water
waves from a gentle breeze.

Visits
----------------

We've had a few visits over the weekend, including Roger, one of the
renters on the Zehr's property, the landowner Leland Kropf, and the
neighbor at the corner of Irish Bend, Jeff Kropf.