Day Five

Today has been very grey and raining. Andrew confirmed with Mike Rietveld the cancellation of tonight's DROP experiment, though suffered pangs when the clouds started to clear. Thankfully it all went grotty again very soon afterwards. Instead we went and set the equipment up in their 'final' configuration. Andrew crawled around in the very limited space beneath the dome in an effort to fit the camera and photometer in with the Norstar camera. I held the ladder.

Our fiddling involved setting the correct angle and alignment for the DASI camera, except that we had noticed dark spots on the monitor. After vigorous cleaning of the screen the spots remained and so Andrew dismantled the lens and we set about polishing that. Upon refitting the spots had diminished and so we were pleased. With some fiddling around with the compass and inclinometer Andrew was able to get the camera properly pointed up the field line, though it was not far off anyway.

After the camera came the photometer. This needed to be stood somewhat higher than simply in the floor. First attempt used three large wooden blocks that Mike had lying around in the hut (as you do). This produced a decent height such as the other instruments were removed from the field of view, but it was somewhat unstable. We next hit upon the idea of using the small stool/stairs, which proved a much better mount. The only problem now was that the photometer does not point vertically when sat on its base; to compensate we shoved a thin pad of paper under one side such that the instrument faced upwards properly. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.

It was far too cloudy to focus the camera properly at this stage, but when we turned the photometer on we found a very large signal in the green line. Much larger than with any of the other filters. We dived outside to see if there was bright aurora behind the clouds - and promptly dived back in after getting soaked by the heavy rain!

The signal faded after a while, and in the meantime Bjorn Gustafson popped in. He has not yet been to Skibotn, it turned out, instead he intends to travel there on Monday. At the moment that is the ETA for Todd Pedersen (no time of day known). We are still waiting for his camera to arrive (this is slightly concerning). Bjorn, kindly drove us to the Hilton so that we could escape getting drenched in the rain!

Earlier today, Andrew and I went to the ARIES site. Thomas had mentioned some damage to the antennas. We did a unit-by-unit check and indeed found a number with broken or frayed guy ropes, broken top supports and/or large leans. Pete Chapman (via email) wonders whether it could be caused by Reindeer or UV. Personally I fear shoddy construction ;-)

The fraying did seem very regular, in very similar positions on each rope, we are baffled by the cause. After we returned from the ARIES site, we grabbed some lunch and Andrew spent some time working on his elan file for FACE, whilst I did some work on my laptop.

A curious site was a group of people stood and sat just down the site road from the Hilton. They had some dogs with them as well. We have no idea what they were doing unless they were a contingent of the least effective anti-radar demonstrators I have ever seen. It looked like they had come for a day out in the wet, and where better than EISCAT?