Day Six - A Wet Sunday Afternoon
Surprise, surprise it was cloudy and raining today. The Norwegian meteorologists seem to have been spot on so far. I must admit though that the low cloud and drizzle this evening was actually quite pleasant. The clouds did lift slightly and let the sunshine through, but not for long. Mike Rietveld was at Heating in case we decided to run; he had a piece of the Dynasonde to fix - it has been broken since Friday. Andrew and I did go to the hut and turned the photometer on to see how it handled the light at the experiment start time (16:30 UT). Not well as it turned out. The instrument is much more sensitive than Mike thought. With the aperture at F11 the signal was close to saturation; fully open and no chance what so ever, and this was in cloudy conditions. We did note that by 17:00 UT the aperture could be opened fully and a useable signal was available. We discussed with Thomas the possibility of eating into the Finnish time and there are some possibilities depending on geomagnetic conditions.
We have lent a GPS unit to Mike Rietveld so that the Russians can get a good fix of where they are setting up their equipment. He supplied the batteries so I guess its fair. The Finns are running the UHF tonight and it seems to be going fine; Thomas said that on Friday night it worked very well, with only a single crowbar occurring. Mike Rietveld said that the cause of the sporadic operations might well have been that the water cooling in the hub room needed topping up. He is optimistic that the VHF will work, though as I reported previously it needs a piece of kit from the UHF at the moment. Fine for us, not so fine for the Finns who want both operating.
That reminds me, one of the UCL FPIs (Kiruna) is broken and as such this likely puts paid to their experiment.
Nothing much else exciting today. A horse and trap from the stables down the road came along but I was too slow with my camera. One of the technicians turned up extra early due to some sort of mix-up. Pete Chapman has asked us to attempt repairs on the ARIES array; some replacement kit is available and some of the guy ropes had enough spare that we might be able to do something. So if the weather improves and we have the time we will head over there and fix things up.
No word from Todd yet. I am half expecting a call at 12:30 AM (local time) asking to be picked up from the airport. More worrying still is that there is no sign of his camera. Mike Rietveld had a call last week saying it was in Oslo. No sign since then...
We shall see what tomorrow brings.
We have lent a GPS unit to Mike Rietveld so that the Russians can get a good fix of where they are setting up their equipment. He supplied the batteries so I guess its fair. The Finns are running the UHF tonight and it seems to be going fine; Thomas said that on Friday night it worked very well, with only a single crowbar occurring. Mike Rietveld said that the cause of the sporadic operations might well have been that the water cooling in the hub room needed topping up. He is optimistic that the VHF will work, though as I reported previously it needs a piece of kit from the UHF at the moment. Fine for us, not so fine for the Finns who want both operating.
That reminds me, one of the UCL FPIs (Kiruna) is broken and as such this likely puts paid to their experiment.
Nothing much else exciting today. A horse and trap from the stables down the road came along but I was too slow with my camera. One of the technicians turned up extra early due to some sort of mix-up. Pete Chapman has asked us to attempt repairs on the ARIES array; some replacement kit is available and some of the guy ropes had enough spare that we might be able to do something. So if the weather improves and we have the time we will head over there and fix things up.
No word from Todd yet. I am half expecting a call at 12:30 AM (local time) asking to be picked up from the airport. More worrying still is that there is no sign of his camera. Mike Rietveld had a call last week saying it was in Oslo. No sign since then...
We shall see what tomorrow brings.
posted by Kav at 9:22 pm
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