TREX: Logbook Entries

TREX: daily status Messages: 44 Entries..

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Entry Date Title Site Author #Graphics
266 Mon 01-May-2006Final status and tear down duties in briefallpoulos
263 Sun 30-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
260 Sat 29-Apr-2006Guy Wire Tensionswestgolubieski
259 Sat 29-Apr-2006Guy Wire Tensionssouthgolubieski
257 Sat 29-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
254 Fri 28-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
251 Thu 27-Apr-2006ISFF T-REX daily status 27 Apr 2006allpoulos
244 Wed 26-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
241 Tue 25-Apr-2006Daily status 26 Apr 2006allpoulos
233 Mon 24-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
229 Sun 23-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
220 Fri 21-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
215 Thu 20-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
211 Wed 19-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
203 Tue 18-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
202 Mon 17-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
200 Sun 16-Apr-2006Daily statusallpoulos
192 Sat 15-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
187 Fri 14-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
179 Thu 13-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
175 Wed 12-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
172 Tue 11-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
169 Mon 10-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
162 Sun 09-Apr-2006Daily statusallmilitzer
153 Thu 06-Apr-2006Daily statusallhorst
148 Tue 04-Apr-2006Daily statusallhorst
140 Mon 03-Apr-2006Daily statusallhorst
139 Sun 02-Apr-2006Daily statusallhorst
130 Fri 31-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
125 Thu 30-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
120 Wed 29-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
116 Tue 28-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
111 Mon 27-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
109 Sun 26-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
104 Sat 25-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
100 Fri 24-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
95 Thu 23-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
88 Wed 22-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
85 Tue 21-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
80 Mon 20-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
76 Sun 19-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
72 Sat 18-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
65 Fri 17-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst
58 Thu 16-Mar-2006Daily statusallhorst


266: daily status, Site all, Mon 01-May-2006 08:54:34 PDT, Final status and tear down duties in brief
ISFF T-REX Daily Status 1 May 2006

All systems and sensors are operating normally. 

Teardown begins today with South, West and then Central.

A singly redundant copy of isff... data has been copied to exthd9 and of the final hotfilm run to exthd7 through the end of the UTC day 30 Apr 2006 (the end of T-REX). Discs are quite full but I anticipate sufficient space. The final copies will be made as the pocketecs are gathered today.

I will bring home one copy, and the pocketecs on Friday 5 May 2006.

The Stanford/Berkeley group continues to extract soil moisture/temperature sensors and utilize the ISFF oven/TRIME/scales as the trailer fills. Poulos will finish their gravimetric scales from his hotel room so that they can return for finals, starting Tuesday.
263: daily status, Site all, Sun 30-Apr-2006 10:36:56 PDT, Daily status
ISFF T-REX Daily status - 30 Apr 2006
Poulos, Knudson, Golubieski, Agee on-site

All sensors and systems are operating normally. T-REX EOP-5 will complete at 1300 LT today and T-REX itself formally ends at 00UTC 1 May.

The OTIHS run is ongoing with the ASU lidar staring at the 3m system for lidar/hot-film/sonic dissipation estimate intercomparisons.
260: daily status, Site west, Sat 29-Apr-2006 17:06:56 PDT, Guy Wire Tensions
Guy wire tensions for West's 30m tower

Inner to outer
SE: 350,290,350,320
SW: 325,250,275,275
N:  340,240,260,280

259: daily status, Site south, Sat 29-Apr-2006 17:04:21 PDT, Guy Wire Tensions
South 30M tower guy wire tensions.

Inner to outer
N:  325,275,250,280
SE: 360,310,350,300
SW: 375,275,340,290


257: daily status, Site all, Sat 29-Apr-2006 15:16:56 PDT, Daily status
ISFF T-REX Daily status 29 Apr 2006
Poulos, Golubieski on-site

All sensors, systems and data plotting routines are functioning well today. The OTIHS run continues today (> 25 hours). EOP-4 has concluded at this time and EOP-5 begins shortly and will run until 1pm 30 April.

Today we'll be taking final gravimetric/TRIME measurements at each tower today.

It appears, after further investigation, that the soil temperature deviation at Central versus West/South (Delta T ~ 10C) may yet be realistic. The soil moisture levels, perhaps due to local groundwater conditions or soil type differences (alkali vs. sand/mixed) seem to be combining to create these differences during daytime. Interestingly, the soil temperature at all three sites converges overnight - implying that the calibration coefficients that have been checked at least once earlier in the experiment, are correct.
254: daily status, Site all, Fri 28-Apr-2006 15:58:32 PDT, Daily status
ISFF T-REX Apr Daily Status
Poulos, Golubieski on site

All sensors and systems are operating well.  OTIHS run began at ~1230 LT and expected to continue until data system is longer running.
  
EOP4 began today at 1600 LT and will continue to 1300 4/29.  EOP5 will run 1600 LT through 1300 4/30.


251: daily status, Site all, Thu 27-Apr-2006 09:22:01 PDT, ISFF T-REX daily status 27 Apr 2006
ISFF T-REX Daily status 27 Apr 2006

Poulos, Agee on site

All sensors except the 30m T/RH at the west tower are operating normally. Data systems and online data plots are operating well.

IOP-15 ended at 12UTC today.

Krypton voltages appear to be getting low at 30 m for South and West, and at 5 m at Central.

244: daily status, Site all, Wed 26-Apr-2006 11:35:04 PDT, Daily status
T-REX ISFF Daily Status 26 Apr 2006

Poulos, Agee on site

All sensors are operating normally at this time.

In the past 24 hours we have 1) executed a series of wireless tests to fix a flaky wireless link to the Central, and 2) experienced a hardware failure of the Aster docking station (at approximately 2300 local, last night). Item #1 resulted in the loss of ~ 1.5 hours of Central data (all) and an additional 4.5 hours of 5m and 15m sonic data at Central mid-day 25 Apr. Item #2 resulted in a large gap in the online data plots until the Aster system could be restarted with a partial power (65W) cord from Poulos' much smaller laptop. Golubieski will be bringing a full 90W AC/DC power cord from Boulder tomorrow and we will return to near full capability.

Agee has been given responsibility for the following field duties today:
1) Triply redundant TRIME and gravimetric measurements at the South tower
2) Pictures of the soil sensor installation area at South, West and Central
3) Checking the H_2 level at Central
4) Checking spotting of the radiation sensors at South, West and Central (excluding the tall rad sensor) from recent rains and cleaning as needed
5) Obtaining replacement batteries for the GPS and a few extras for a supply in the Base.


241: daily status, Site all, Tue 25-Apr-2006 10:27:14 PDT, Daily status 26 Apr 2006
All sensors are operating at this time. 

The wireless to Central continues to perform poorly at intervals. We are switching it to the high-gain antenna in an attempt to improve performance further.

It appears that South and West soil temperature may be miscalculated (their values are in a reasonable range but are behaving non-physcially. The coefficients will be checked.
233: daily status, Site all, Mon 24-Apr-2006 08:20:05 PDT, Daily status
Daily status 4/23/2006

Poulos, Militzer

All installed sensors are operating normally.
The aerosol sensor at west had its laser go and was returned to the factory.

All data systems are operating.
Wireless outages with Central have improved greatly overnight with (multiple choice)
a) lack of rain
b) slight readjustment of eantj's pointing angle.
c) reboot of tpop
d) coincidence
e) all of the above



229: daily status, Site all, Sun 23-Apr-2006 07:20:39 PDT, Daily status
Daily status 4/23/2006

Poulos, Militzer

All installed sensors are operating normally.
The aerosol sensor at west had its laser go and will be returned to the factory.

All data systems are operating.
Wireless outages with Central have worsened substantially.
We installed a different antenna yesterday morning and it ran through the day.
However about 20:00PDT 4/22 it became very intermittent.  Perhaps coincidentally
light drizzle entered the valley at that time with heavier rain this morning.
When conditions allow we'll make another attempt.



220: daily status, Site all, Fri 21-Apr-2006 11:30:48 PDT, Daily status
Daily status 4/21/2006

Poulos, Militzer

All sensors are operating normally, with the exception of the West tower aerosol system. Discussions are ongoing between John, Shane and the manufacturer. The hot-film ran successfully overnight and is now shutdown due to increasing southerly flow outside the acceptance cone of the system. The pocketec local storage device from hotfilm was moved to Central to allow data download from Central to Base.

All data systems are operating, although we had an overnight outage of the network connection at Central NIDS at ~1am local 4/21.
This required a hard boot to re-establish at ~ 9am 4/21. No data, except for the reboot process, was lost due to ongoing local storage during the network outage.

Intermittently, we also had outages of the wireless network connection to Central through the flaky etherant there. With consultation to Gordon, we will attempt to change it out with the spare in the ISFF Base (eantG, as 12.40 in place of eantH at Central). 

215: daily status, Site all, Thu 20-Apr-2006 10:56:04 PDT, Daily status
Daily status, ISFF T-REX, 20 Apr 2006
Poulos, Militzer onsite, Maclean left this morning

The aerosol sensor at West has been removed from the tower for checkout in the base station. 

All other sensors are operating normally.
The Hotfilm is continuing to run normally and had very good conditions last night.


211: daily status, Site all, Wed 19-Apr-2006 13:00:05 PDT, Daily status
Daily status, ISFF T-REX, 19 Apr 2006
Poulos, Militzer and Maclean onsite

The TP01 west was repaired and returned to functionality as of 6pm, 4/18/06.
The aerosol sensor at West has been down since the afternoon of 4/18/06 - it did not recover after a power cycle.

All other sensors are operating normally (although occasional Etherant outages at Central continue to create gaps in our online plots).

203: daily status, Site all, Tue 18-Apr-2006 09:30:26 PDT, Daily status
ISFF T-REX Daily status for April 18, 2006

One sensor is currently inoperative: the volumetric soil heat capacity probe at the West tower. All other sensors are operating normally.

A hot-film run began at 3pm LT April 17 and is ongoing (expected to continue through EOP-3 [4pm LT 4/18 - 1pm LT 4/19]) until, perhaps as late as Friday 4/21.
202: daily status, Site all, Mon 17-Apr-2006 05:51:48 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 16, 2006, with Maclean, Militzer, Poulos on site.

All sensors at all tower sites and data systems are operational at this time. 

See 15 minute updates at http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rtf/projects/trex/isff/qcdata/

OTIHS (hot-films) were run last night from ~19:00PDT 16 Apr to ~0830PDT 17 Apr. Data acquisition was successful. OTIHS will be redeployed later today as synoptic flow subsides.

Winds during the night rotated the antenna from the base to the hotfilm site, losing the remote link to the system (all data was recorded locally). Velocities remained below 10m/s at the ground level but increased significantly this morning such that OTIHS was shut down at 830am LT. 



200: daily status, Site all, Sun 16-Apr-2006 10:09:50 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 16, 2006, with Maclean, Militzer, Poulos on site.

All sensors at all tower sites and data systems are operational at this time. Online plots are now updated every 15 minutes at: http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rtf/projects/trex/isff/qcdata/

IOP #13 is underway and scheduled through today and until 08UTC Monday.

There was an ~2.5 hour wireless outage to Central in the early morning hours and a brief dsm-server outage to all three sites also in the early morning hours. No data was lost due to local storage at the tower sites but the online plots and redundant data storage on Aster show these gaps.

Another OTIHS (hot-film) data acquisition test began this morning in a new configuration where data files are written in 30 minute increments (each file is ~ 250Mb). Recent data acquisition driver changes have stabilized data acquisition. The next run with the hot-film sensors attached will begin Monday without automated data system restarts.

192: daily status, Site all, Sat 15-Apr-2006 07:09:44 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 15, 2006,

On site: Maclean, Militzer, Poulos

5m CSAT at West has been down since 9:45PDT 14Apr.  Restarted at 7:30PDT today.
Other Sensors and data systems operating normally at this time.
IOP #13 begins at 13:00PDT and scheduled to last 36 hours.

Another HotFilm test began last night to check edits Gordon made to the a/d code.

NOTE: ISFF ONLINE DATA PLOTS plots are available.
We are increasing the real-time update rate from 1-hour to 15-minutes.
http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rtf/projects/trex/isff/qcdata/

ISFF on-line logbook is available at:
http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rtf/projects/trex/isff/
187: daily status, Site all, Fri 14-Apr-2006 08:43:57 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 14, 2006,

On site: Maclean, Militzer

Sensors and data systems operating normally at this time.
We've noticed that the etherant on central has remained on-line for several days despite frequent 'halts' roughly a week ago.  Factors could be a) luck, b) improved battery/energy situation c) we removed the etherant at the school d) unknown interfering source has gone away...most likely 'a'.

Imitation HotFilm test began last night to test some edits Gordon made to the a/d code.  Halted this morning due to full usbstick and to save power.


179: daily status, Site all, Thu 13-Apr-2006 12:17:55 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 13, 2006,

On site: Maclean, Militzer

Sensors operating normally at this time.

Added extra guy wires to the 5m tower @ central to
reduce the twist oscillations.

60W fuel cell in base trailer for testing, shipping to manufacturer.

Hotfilm data system in base for testing.
175: daily status, Site all, Wed 12-Apr-2006 08:23:24 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 12, 2006,

On site: Maclean, Militzer

Most sensors operating normally at this time. The 5m Csat at Central was down overnight from roughly 17:00-6:30.  Data messages were coming through, but all flags were set.  The 5m krypton running off this sensor shows a large drop in voltage (.4) at this time but the trace otherwise is believable. 

The blankety-blank Fuel Cell at Central provided a whopping .5 A charging current at best overnight.


















172: daily status, Site all, Tue 11-Apr-2006 09:24:56 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 11, 2006,

On site: Maclean, Militzer

Most sensors operating normally at this time. The 15m Csat at Central was down until this morning after we power cycled the station at ~14:00PDT yesterday afternoon when we installed the power monitor board. 

Hotfilm run began last night at ~19:30PDT (2:30Z today).  We will remove it later this morning.






















169: daily status, Site all, Mon 10-Apr-2006 09:19:38 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 10, 2006,

On site: Maclean, Militzer

All sensors operating normally at this time.  Wireless link at central went down yesterday afternoon again and required a power reset.  As usual, there was no data loss on the local storage.





















162: daily status, Site all, Sun 09-Apr-2006 09:18:45 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 9, 2006

On site: Maclean, Militzer

All sensors operating normally at this time.  Wireless link had been going down but remained up through the night.  Battery voltage have risen in the last few days with solar charging, may be a factor.

Hot film run began around 1700 PDT yesterday and ran successfully through
the night with some drop outs in the morning.



















153: daily status, Site all, Thu 06-Apr-2006 09:24:43 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 6, 2006

On site: Horst, Semmer, Militzer

All sensors operating normally at this time.  Wireless link to central went downyesterday.

Hot film run began around 1800 PDT yesterday and ran successfully through
the night.  


















148: daily status, Site all, Tue 04-Apr-2006 09:54:14 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 4, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally at this time.  10m sonic and kryptons at west
affected by rain last night.

















140: daily status, Site all, Mon 03-Apr-2006 09:35:24 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 3, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally at this time.
















139: daily status, Site all, Sun 02-Apr-2006 11:45:16 PDT, Daily status
Daily status April 2, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally at this time.
Hot-film EOP last night.

The periodic losses of data from the loggers at south and west no longer appear
in the netcdf data, even for prior time periods!?!?!?

The wireless network went down yesterday, but data continue to be recorded 
at the tower sites.














130: daily status, Site all, Fri 31-Mar-2006 10:12:57 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 31, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally at this time.

The Campbell data loggers at south and west have periodic data losses.
Steve suspects that this may be interference at 915 MHz.










125: daily status, Site all, Thu 30-Mar-2006 10:47:15 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 30, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally at this time.
15 m sonic had to be rebooted last night.
Hot-film EOP started last night at 16:35 PST; ran okay through the night.








120: daily status, Site all, Wed 29-Mar-2006 09:40:08 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 29, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally. 
Yesterday we added the 3 hot-film sonics to the normal data collection.







116: daily status, Site all, Tue 28-Mar-2006 10:00:01 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 28, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally. 





111: daily status, Site all, Mon 27-Mar-2006 10:05:24 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 27, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally.  Hot film system running since 1500 yesterday.




109: daily status, Site all, Sun 26-Mar-2006 10:44:16 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 26, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the hot film system.
Visited west yesterday to install new battery for electric fence.

dsm server went down yesterday evening and PAM mast with etherant antenna to
central broke in apparent high wind.  Don't know if these events were related.

hot film motor orientation appears to have run successfully last night for
all three units.

104: daily status, Site all, Sat 25-Mar-2006 09:16:13 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 25, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the hot film system.
Visited central site yesterday to restart etherant communications;  
visited west tower to clean KH2O.

Steve continues to rebuild the motor orientation mounts for the hot-film to
correct slipping problem.

100: daily status, Site all, Fri 24-Mar-2006 10:41:27 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 24, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the hot film system.  
Visited west tower yesterday for routine maintenance; replaced fuse on 
serial channel 14 and restarted aerosol spectrometer.

Steve has been rebuilding the motor orientation mounts for the hot-film to
correct slipping problem.
95: daily status, Site all, Thu 23-Mar-2006 09:55:58 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 23, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the aerosol sensor
at west and the hot film system.  Did not get to west yesterday to recycle 
power; maybe today.

Visited south tower yesterday for routine maintenance.

Mounted hot film sensors yesterday around 1700 yesterday, 
pointed in a fixed direction (west) because motor orientation device slipping.
Ran until about 3:45 this morning when daisy appears to have stopped.



88: daily status, Site all, Wed 22-Mar-2006 09:41:46 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 22, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the aerosol sensor
at west and the hot film system.  Will try recycling power on aerosol sensor.

Hot film system ran successfully last night without hot film probes attached.
Approximately 0.5 hours of A/D data was lost due to failure of daisy A/D,
but daisy was rebooted once per hour to restart A/d. 





85: daily status, Site all, Tue 21-Mar-2006 09:40:50 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 21, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the hot-film system.

Still struggling with hot film system.  Test last night failed.

80: daily status, Site all, Mon 20-Mar-2006 09:21:05 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 20, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the hot-film system.
The link to the school is down at the moment.

The hot film system stayed up during the night. Based on the local storage
file sizes the A/D stayed up for about 7 hours. Ripple stayed up on an
external battery that is not on the charging grid. We will go out there
later this morning to check on the ripple battery and restart the A/D system.


76: daily status, Site all, Sun 19-Mar-2006 13:18:28 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 19, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the hot-film system.

The hotfilm stayed up last nightin the lab. It was configured in the base 
with ripple tied directly to the prometheus via a swapper ethernet cable. 
The plan is to move it out to the site later today with ripple housed 
inside the Prometheus box. The external hard drive on ripple will not be used 
since the local USB drive files look good. We may try to get ripple hooked up 
to the wireless link so we can monitor things back at the base.


72: daily status, Site all, Sat 18-Mar-2006 08:40:51 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 18, 2006

On site: Horst and Semmer

Replaced dead battery in both loggers supporting the downward-looking 
pyrgeometers.

Brought hot film to base for testing; ran for 4 hours last night until the
a/d failed.

All sensors operating normally, with the exception of the hot-film system.
65: daily status, Site all, Fri 17-Mar-2006 08:18:52 PST, Daily status
ISFF daily status, March 17 am

Staff:  Steve Semmer arrived yesterday, Steve Oncley left this morning
        Tom still here....

ASTER data directory filled up last night, so lost some data

One of the 4 data loggers at Central has stopped; likely dead battery.
This is one of the loggers supporting a single outgoing pyrgeometer.

Installed aerosol spectrometer at west tower for REAL yesterday.
Replaced bad 15 m TRH at south tower.

Took soil samples for gravimeteric soil moisture analysis at south and 
west towers.

58: daily status, Site all, Thu 16-Mar-2006 09:04:02 PST, Daily status
Daily status March 16, 2006

On site: Horst and Oncley

Replaced 15 m hygrothermometer at south tower yesterday, but it is also
not operating properly.  One guess is that the humitter is not plugged in.

Soil moisture sensor at south tower reporting negative soil moisture.

Otherwise things appear to be normal for the moment.