CACHE94: SONIC Messages: 33 Entries..

OSU Sonic levels 
 
      Level sensors for OSU ATI sonic 
At this point we believe that the level sensors on the OSU sonic did not 
come from ATI, but that the electronics includes an A/D board for levels. 
So the level output could possibly be digitized and the serial output format 
made identical to the NCAR ati sonics. 
 
Assuming this won't work, 2 analog channels, marigold 116 and 117, have 
been config'd - though this may exceed our breakout box capacity. 
The calibration offset and gains for converting to degrees are in 
prep.config. The dids are (tlev,slev).atik.10m.walk, for transverse 
level and streamwise level. 
 
The OSU sonic serial output should be terse, and does not have to contain 
levels.  The sio_converters scan string is %hd %hd %hd %hd %hd %hd, 
which expects 6 integers. If there are only 4, everything will 
still work, just that the last 2 fields will be garbage.  These last 2 
are alev and blev, which we can ignore.  Perhaps we could set them to 
null but I'm not sure the software can handle that. 
 
 
 
 
 

Solent sonic anemometer reinstalled on walkup tower 
 
The solent was taken down at ~ 1000 and the jumpers were checked : all OK 
 
The Solent sonic anemometer was realigned on its mount such 
that the u axis is along the stream axis at right angles to the 
round boom. This is in accordance to the diagram on page 42 of 
the Solent manual. (NB the diagram on page 41 is not applicable) 
 
There is an indication from the cockpit display that the v winds 
are 180 degrees off with respect to the ATI on the walkup tower. 
 
When the Solent sonic anemometer was reinstalled on walkup tower 
it was leveled to within 0.1 degrees while the boom was in the 
southern swing-back position. 
 

GILL running: 
 
  The serial cable to the Gill 
was modified to get a -12v signal 
on RTS. The sonic is now running. 
We still need to change the sign 
convention for the v component 
in the calibration program. 
 
 

Work on the flux tower: 
 
 Work on the flux tower has been 
going on all day. The 10m and 15m sonics 
were brought down to try to resolve the 
TC problem. 
 The 10m TC signal looked fine once it 
was on the ground. The 15m stayed bad at 
ground level. After recalibration the sensors 
were installed. Cables were routed on the outside 
incase they need to come down again. 
Work on the tower stopped at about 23:30 GMT. 
 
 
 
 

ATI angles from jd 220: 
 
 The sonic boom alignment was 
shot yesterday. Due to limited 
access, the "v" component was used. 
 
angles: 
 
ATI.10m		213 25' 50" 
ATI.15m		213 04' 10" 
 

New ATI angles: 
 
 After working on the sonics new angles 
for the booms were computed. 
There was a change of about 1 degree. 
This was probable due to the additional 
tower guys added yesterday. New angles 
were shot at 00:15 GMT, jd 222. 
 
angles: 
 
ATI.10m		214 22' 00" 
ATI.15m		214 20' 50" 
 

Cleaned water off 10m ati flux: 
 
 Water was removed from the ati.10m.flux 
 at 17:50 GMT. It did not make a change 
in the spikes. 
 
 
 

Flux sonic boom angles added to sonic.config.S 
 

Another cleaning of ati.10m.flux: 
 
 The tower was climbed again, at 19:50 GMT, 
to try cleaning the ati. We are still getting 
noise on the w component. There is also 
noise on the 10m krypton. 
 

ATI.10m.flux looking good! 
 
 Recycling power on the 10m ati 
cleaned up the w component. Also 
tryed recycling power on krypton, no 
improvement. 
 

Move Solent position on walk-up tower boom. 
At ~ 1300 pdt the solent was switch off and then relocated from 
its position to the left (looking outward ) of the atik  
to a position to the right of the atik between the atik and 
the FSSP. It was repowered at approx 1415 pdt. 
 

Data from Solent is bad! 
 
  Since solent was moved we have not 
gotten good data from it. Will try recycling 
power. 
 

ATI.10m.walk level sensor plug fixed 
 

atik.flux sonics revived 
 
I cycled power on both the 10m and 15m boxes and got both 
sonics running again (no noise, reasonable (compared to .walk 
sonics) values, tc onscale).  There was condensation(?) in the 
10m box, but the 15m was dry. 
 
Later in the day, we adjusted (slightly) both .flux sonics. 
They were mostly OK, but I did make changes to most channels. 
We should rezero sometime, but I don't expect there to be any 
changes. 
 

Cleaned ati sonic cards 
 
We "erased" the edge connectors and reseated all the electronic 
boards in the ati electronic box of both 10m and 15m atik.flux. 
The sonics now appear to be working, but this may not have anything 
to do with our efforts. 
 

reseated atik.10m.flux transducers 
 
This done to try to get better performance out of this sonic, which 
has been bad a large fraction of the time.  I wanted to reseat the 
main sonic cable also, but couldn't manage to disconnect it without 
more force than I felt comfortable with up the tower.  Note that 
I was up the tower for about 10-15 min. doing this.  I toggled the 
"on-tower" switch (from the "walk") position  a few minutes after I 
came down.  It should be easy to tell from the level and sonic data 
information also. 
 
 

playing around with atik.10m.flux 
 
I've just returned from the tower where I reseated the main sonic 
connector on the atik.10m.flux.  I still notice some spikes. 
 
The on-tower switch is still on since I may go up again to pull the 
array completely down. 
 

more atik.10m.flux work 
 
We went ahead and dropped the sonic, even though it wasn't looking 
too bad, so we could adjust it with a good "zero wind" condition. 
We ended up just reseating transducers again to get rid of some 
amplitude "jumps" in the w-axis.  As long as we had it on the ground, 
we zeroed it. 
 
It is now operating with the cal chambers on all of the axes and 
we are looking at it on xstrip to see if any problems occur. 
 
Obviously, the fast T at this height also is down (in fact, it is 
in my pocket now). 
 

sonic work continued.. 
 
We ran the atik.10m.flux for 15 min on the ground and 
saw U go into a spikey mode.  We replaced the U transducers 
with new ones and ran for another 5-10 min with it looking 
okay(?).  Since clouds were coming in, we ran it back up 
the mast. 
 
We also reinstalled the fast T probe. 
 
As long as we were doing tower work, we installed the boom 
for the IR hygrometer which we may install tomorrow. 
 

sonic work 
 
We looked at the atik.10m.flux on the scope while we knew 
it was spiking and saw probable mistriggers on U, occasional 
noise (asynchronous receive signals) on V, and constant noise 
on W.  We cycled power, which seems to have helped a bit, and 
reduced the U signal somewhat with the potentiometer. 
 
We'll try drying the arrays off when the towers dry off (hopefully 
pretty soon since there is some sun), and we'll probably do 
a few other things (zero the channels). 
 
 

15-m ATI W sensors re-seated 
 
That appears to have brought the signal back into 
reasonable looking levels, and consistent with the 
10-m ATI-W. 
 
 
 

Zeroed atik.10m.flux 
 
This done to remove the bias in Tc.  It seems to have helped. 
 
I cycled the fast T switch since it was necessary to remove 
the probe in order to zero W. 
 

Tower work 
 
I was on the tower from about 20-10 min ago (and forgot to throw 
the tower switch) to do 2 things: 
 
1 - Clean the 10m Krypton window.  This brought it on scale, 
	but it still is very noisy. 
2 - Dry and reseat 15m ATI transducers.  This fixed U and V, but 
	W is still bad. 
 

Walk-up ATI spiking 
 
The v channel on the walk-up ATI is spiking more now. 
We tried grounding the box, but no changes. 
Note u and w chan. OK 
 

Noted higner variances (compared to other sonics)
on the ati.10m.flux wind components near the end 
of day jd 245 and 1500-1600.

After the rain I checked all the instrumentation boxes by
the flux tower, and found plenty of water in the lower ATI box.
This is the second time for this particular unit, so keep an
eye on it after rain events.

Charlie and I grounded thee boom/IMT on the walkup tower at 2pm or so. The 
very noisy v component on the OSU ATI cleaned up completely after being
fully grounded. We addded another ground to the ATI case with no perceived
change but decided to keep both case and boom/IMT grounded. Apparently
the boom is insulated from the tower thru the bushing on the boom-shaft.

By 1215 (noon) today we finally had a robust ground onthe ATI OSU sonic.
V had been spiking this am again, probably because the ground was not 'solid'.

Solent data shows high variance in tc over the last day;
started to diverge from other sonic tc's around 19 Z JD 250
w:tc's for jd 250 also show divergences from the ati
measurements. 

It was raining hard and very gusty from 18Z onward, jd 250

Water beads on the upper w transducer of the 10m walkup ati have been
clobbering the signal.  Andy has wiped it off, but it keeps reforming.
Need more wind (or Delany air blast!).

Opened the sonic electronics boxes on the flux tower and found liquid
water in them.  Dried them out.

Remeasured sonic zeroes at 10m since yesterday's data was lost.  This
occurred from approximately 4:45-4:50 pm PDT.

OSU ATI sonic has zero chambers (3) on now at 6pm PDT