Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: Vaira | Tonzi
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West Pond: 2023-10-04 16:05:00 (DOY 277)
Author: Daphne Szutu
Others: Joe

Summary: Added 4th battery to battery bank, 7500 PLL error--swapped, trimmed willows

2023-10-04
West Pond

Joe and I arrived at 16:05 PDT after a full day at Vaira and Tonzi. It was warm and humid and there were a handful of wasps buzzing around. It was super hot when wearing the waders. The inlet was off and the staff gauge read 66cm. We passed a goat and two v. cute baby goats on the road to the tower.

This is an off-cycle visit to check on power. I checked the met data when we arrived and we’re still losing power every night between 21:00 and 23:00. Power comes back up around 7:00.

Joe worked on trimming the willow south of the solar panels. He cut down everything that was shading the panels. We dumped the branches on either side of the road. One of the branches might have disturbed a wasp nest among the tules—there were a bunch of wasps buzzing in that area, but it was far enough from the car that they didn’t bother us.

I unplugged power at the tower and Joe added an additional battery to the sn BB-WP. The battery bank now has 4 batteries connected in 24V. I turned the power back on at the tower and the load was about 0.5A. The solar panel was a bit dusty but we didn’t bring the squeegee today. Joe left some mothballs in the battery boxes to dissuade the ants.

CO2 and H2O from the 7500 were reading 0 and there was a PLL error again. We weren’t sure if the 7500 error was because this sensor is relatively old or from all of the power cycles. The sensor is from 2014 and has never been back to the factory. We decided to swap the 7500 since it is due for calibration anyways. Sn 75H-2514 came off and sn 1594 went on. I updated the configuration file and pressure coefficients, and rest the box.

The 7700 is still disconnected to save on power.

I downloaded flux and met data. I didn’t download any photos today. I did not turn the Canon camera back on. It would only give us a few photos before turning off tonight. The picam has been working well and should have the full set of photos.

7500 fresh read: 399ppm CO2, 805mmol/m3 H2O, 32.0C, 101.2kPA, 100SS

Joe trimmed some of the other willows back from the road.

We left at 17:10 PDT.

0 photos found

8 sets found

Can't check WP_DO
1 WP_DO graphs found