Day Seven - anyone seen Noah?
Today it rained.
And then it rained some more.
Then a bit later on it rained.
Overall today was decidedly damp. The hut, thankfully, remained dry and so Andrew's skilled patching (I held the ladder) worked beautifully. Sparkle (the photometer) was working exactly as expected - far too sensitive. By ~7 local time we had a workable signal. But we did not loiter since optical conditions were not at their best. Did I mention that it rained?
We went and bugged Mike Rietveld for a couple of hours as he tried to fix the Dynasonde. We tried to help and he graciously pretended that we had.
Todd's camera and tripod arrived at ~6ish local time and we stacked it in the main building. The delivery men got a little wet, because it was raining. Whilst we were in the control room they did a little test on the radar (UHF) to verify that it was working. The VHF is still not working, Roger thought they might have a go at fixing it again tomorrow. There was a fantastic rainbow outside the control room at this time giving us a glimpse of sunshine. Of course, the other important contributing factor in a rainbow is that there is rain. Which there was.
We went to pick Todd up at the airport. His flight was slightly delayed on the flight status website, but in fact landed 4 minutes early. We were easily there to meet him. On the way back to the radar site the weather changed. It rained a lot harder. We gave him a quick tour of the radar building, which was curiously empty considering the Finns were supposed to be running. Todd seems satisfied with his lodgings at Heating and we left him to get some sleep and we will all go shopping in the morning. Upon arriving back at the Hilton we discovered that the UHF was broken. Everything seemed to be working okay but there was absolutely no transmission, though everything said that there was. This is very bad. It also means that the Heater is the only EISCAT facility in Tromso in working order and we are not even sure about that since Mike has not tested it since July.
For those who are interested here is a picture of our hire car as we let some locals take it for a spin around the site. It is very economical with fuel and the emissions, though somewhat distracting at first are incredibly environmentally friendly. It even runs well in the rain.
And then it rained some more.
Then a bit later on it rained.
Overall today was decidedly damp. The hut, thankfully, remained dry and so Andrew's skilled patching (I held the ladder) worked beautifully. Sparkle (the photometer) was working exactly as expected - far too sensitive. By ~7 local time we had a workable signal. But we did not loiter since optical conditions were not at their best. Did I mention that it rained?
We went and bugged Mike Rietveld for a couple of hours as he tried to fix the Dynasonde. We tried to help and he graciously pretended that we had.
Todd's camera and tripod arrived at ~6ish local time and we stacked it in the main building. The delivery men got a little wet, because it was raining. Whilst we were in the control room they did a little test on the radar (UHF) to verify that it was working. The VHF is still not working, Roger thought they might have a go at fixing it again tomorrow. There was a fantastic rainbow outside the control room at this time giving us a glimpse of sunshine. Of course, the other important contributing factor in a rainbow is that there is rain. Which there was.
We went to pick Todd up at the airport. His flight was slightly delayed on the flight status website, but in fact landed 4 minutes early. We were easily there to meet him. On the way back to the radar site the weather changed. It rained a lot harder. We gave him a quick tour of the radar building, which was curiously empty considering the Finns were supposed to be running. Todd seems satisfied with his lodgings at Heating and we left him to get some sleep and we will all go shopping in the morning. Upon arriving back at the Hilton we discovered that the UHF was broken. Everything seemed to be working okay but there was absolutely no transmission, though everything said that there was. This is very bad. It also means that the Heater is the only EISCAT facility in Tromso in working order and we are not even sure about that since Mike has not tested it since July.
For those who are interested here is a picture of our hire car as we let some locals take it for a spin around the site. It is very economical with fuel and the emissions, though somewhat distracting at first are incredibly environmentally friendly. It even runs well in the rain.
posted by Kav at 11:12 pm
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