preplows-iss1: Site MISS Messages, 6 Entries..

IOP 4 is taking place in Walcott IA. The MISS system is operating in a truck stop just off I-80. All systems started up without any problems.This surprised me considering the roughness of some of the roads we have been on.

Trailer leveling - front to back .2 degrees  side to side .9 degrees
Lat 41.37 n
lon 90.47 w
alt 801 ft

Profiler amp power output 1.859

Beams:
yv 22 5 degrees
xv 21 95 degrees
y 38 5 degrees
y 26 185 degrees
x 25 95 dgrees
x 37 275 degrees

Soundings are currently planned for every 2 hours from 0z on the 8th until 0z of the 9th. AS of this time two soundings have been made neither had any problems.
Currently there is little to no rain [03z].It has rained very hard at times. The MIPS crew are carrying 4 extra helium cylinders for us as we maybe doing another IOP before returning to Champaign Ill.
After 10pm local time there were some periods with thunder and lighting.

Last sounding of IOP was at 20z.All sounding went smoothly.

Ran system for approx 4 hours today to give anyone who needed to the chance to log in to the various computer systems.
Filled the generator tank. Also cut a distribution from the profiler computer to be installed on the systems still in Boulder.This afternoon will try to find mudflaps for the truck to redused the amount of muck being thrown up onto the MISS trailer. 
Kurt should arrive this evening to replace Bill.
Unless requested the system will not be run for a couple of days.

Daily Report Sun Mar 1

Testing and maintenance day.  Set-up some parameter files on the profiler so swiching a few times between various modes.

Weather, cold and windy (northerlies).  Partly sunny this morning, then clouding over with light flurries in the afternoon.

Swapped out one helium cyclinder, now have 3 full cyclinders back on MISS.

Set-up two parameter files on the profiler:

PLOWS-IOP.PAR (& RADAR.PAR):
IPP 770 PW 700 CODE 4
NHGTS 75 DELAY 2700 SPACE 700 COHAV 60 SPECAV 26 NPTS 128
SCALE 19.5 M/S  DEWLL 20S HGT .24 - 8.01 KM IPP 9.91 KM PLUSE 105

CLEAR-AIR.PAR :
IPP 40  PW 700  CODE 4
NHGTS 42  DELY 2700  SPACE 700  COHAV 180  SPECAV 26  NPTS 128
SCALE 11.4 M/S  DWELL 28S  HGT .24 - 4.55 KM  IPP 5.43 KM  PLUS 105

Generally during IOPs we will use the PLOWS-IOP.PAR set to fairly closely match Kevin Knupp's settings on the MIPS system.   We'll mainly just use the CLEAR-AIR.PAR for testing during clear weather.

Final amp current was 3.20 A for the clear-air mode and 1.83 for the plows-iop mode.

Bill is leaving tomorrow to be replaced by Kurt on Tuesday.

Weather continues to look clear for the next few days.   Bob Rauber says the next possible IOP is next Friday or Saturday - currently models indicate it may be north again, perhaps around Green Bay WI.   After that, models suggest a changed weather pattern with IOPs every few days.

Daily Report Sat Feb 28

Testing day at Champaign Airport.

No log yesterday as we spent the whole day driving back from Tomah WI after IOP 3. so we didn't turn on the system.

Today weather fine, partly cloudy with cold northerlies.

MISS is now parked in the staff parking lot just east of the airport control tower.  It is orientated exactly east-west (front of trailer - beam "x37") pointed due east.

To fix the samba issue with the transfer of profiler par files, we restored the system on the profiler PC from a Ghost backup Lou did this week from before the virus scanner "fixed" the system (backing up the data to CD and USB stick beforehand).   After the restore, we copied back the data files from IOP 3 and the popforwindows startup program from the CD so that the program should be virus free.

Ran the surface met and profiler briefly this afternoon for testing.
Afterwards tested Gary's modified "Copy spc" icon which copies the spc files from the profiler pc and runs NIMA then transfers the data back to Boulder.  It did the first two steps okay, but gave a "Ping to EOL failed" message so did manual transfer using the datasend command.

A period of clear weather has set in and the next IOP is probably not until later in the week (Thursday or Friday).

Daily Report for Thurs Feb 26

IOP 3

Sited at Tomah WI for IOP 3 (IOPs 1 & 2 occurred before MISS arrived).
Hotel Super 8 parking lot north-west corner behind the adjacent restaurant.

Location 44d 1.28m N,  90d 29.605m W, 300 metres.
Trailer orientated to 255 degrees.

Weather, just high cloud on arrival (around 18Z), light grappel to start with, then snow, freezibg rain, and sheet.  Moderate to heavy snow later.  The event lasted about four hours and a bit over an inch of snow accumulated. 

Profiler saw very good signals in the snow, with echo tops around 6km.
There was a bright band for a while 21Z - 22Z, surprizingly high at 1.5 - 2km given the snow and sheet at the surface, but the 21Z sounding did show an inversion with a warm layer at about 2km.

Launched 3 soundings 19Z, 21Z and 0Z.

First sounding lost signal at 650mb for reasons unclear (may have been a mechanical issue with the ties holding the balloon).

Second sounding went up into heavy snow and actually dropped for a brief period due to icing, but eventually went to 100mb okay.

Third sounding soon after snow finished, no problems.

The drive up was rather long - we left Champaign around 4pm (as the IOP wasn't declared until 2pm) and stayed in Rockford overnight, then drove from there this morning.  Rather a slow drive because the highways were a little rough and the MISS trailer bounced around more than expected.

Had a minor network issue on start-up:  the data manager computer couldn't transfer the radar parameters files from the profiler PC so we couldn't use the parameter setup script.  Had to enter orientation and lat/lon etc into the profiler manualy.   Data transfer the other way (with rsync) worked fine so it must have been a samba issue rather than a network problem.  Suspect the virus scanner yesterday upset some of the internet ports.
Data archiving and transfer back to Boulder seems to be working fine.

PRE-PLOWS

MISS Currently parked at Champaign-Urbana Airport waiting first deployment.

Intermittant operation to test equipment.  Currently running on generator so will only be running the system for tests.

Surface met is using a WXT mounted on trailer.  All readings seem to be consistent with airport AWS measurements.

Profiler working okay - fairly low level of clutter and little interference at this site.  Cold and dry so echoes aren't strong but the winds consistent with surface met.

Profiler antenna set-up with X37 to front of trailer, X25 to back, Y38 to right, and Y26 to left (reverse of prev set-up).   Pre-project testing in Boulder uesd
comparisons with ISS4, soundings, and surface met to verify operation.

Note that there is a Field Catalog for PLOWS - daily briefing reports from the PIs will appear on the catalog.

Initial Operations crew is Lou and Bill - thanks for Patti for driving the system up here from Boulder with Lou.