Field Notes
<--2024-12-04 14:30:00 | 2024-12-19 12:20:00-->Other sites visited today: Hill Slough
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Rush Ranch: 2024-12-18 10:30:00 (DOY 353)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Brandon, Patty, Eddie
Summary: Updated solar power with new battery box, added met system to the tower, walked out, forgot some things, changed 7700 heater settings - more power! auto was still not working.
| Rush Ranch 2024-12-18 Brandon and I arrived at about 10:30 and Patty and Eddie arrived at 11:05 PST. It was mild, overcast and pleasant until the wind picked up and it got a little cool. Recent heavy rains had the management requesting that we not drive to the site. Patty brought a couple of wagons that were plenty to carry everything to the tower. The hills are green with new grass peeking through the old litter. At the site there was a new fancy game camera set up about 20m west near the transition from grass to marsh. Looks like it can pan for a full 360 view. Eddie, Patty and Brandon started disassembling the solar box to get the batteries and solar controller out of the wooden base and into the new 42gal Action Packer that Patty brought. After the equipment was removed the lid was screwed down on top. The plan had been to put the solar panels back on top of the box but there wasn't going to be enough room for the Action Packer under the panels. So the panels were left resting on the ground and secured to the top of the box and the new battery box went on top in the middle. All the batteries were cleaned up and they fit well in the new box with the solar controller mounted to one side. There is a combo lock on the box. We could also use some breakers and maybe swap out some of the overly heavy cable. There is a 10A fuse in the line to the tower. I worked on adding a met system to the tower. I put the refurbished met box on the southeast corner of the scaffolding just under the box that Patty put on previously for the StarDot camera. This worked out well as I could just move the card adapter, Ethernet switch, StarDot connections and power to the new box and remove the old box with CR1000 sn 45312. The new equipment included: CR1000 sn 42656 AM25T sn 4852 CNR1 sn 90268 - on end of boom PAR_in sn Q40955 - original PAR_in with repaired cable on boom PAR_out sn Q40954 - original PAR_out with repaired cable on boom Tipping Bucket sn 23374-1298 - I forgot funnel top, mounted top of southeast corner Diffuse SW sn SPN1-A333 - mounted on the top horizontal bar near the northeast corner CS616 soil moisture sn 13932-5 - south of the southwest corner at -8cm SHF sn 003073 - at -2cm Soil T - Profile of five -2,-4, -8, -16, -32cm HMP35 sn 375061 on the top northwest corner Barometer sn V2420003 in the box The soil sensors are in flexible aluminum conduit about 3m south of the southeast corner of the tower. The end of the conduit and short unprotected leads to the sensors are buried. I dropped a nut for the PAR sensor so they are only secured by one #6 bolt. The barometer wasn't reading correctly and later I realized I hadn't setup the table to save all the data. I collected the flux data but didn't have a card reader to collect the StarDot images. I'll make a quick trip tomorrow to fix these things. The 7700 wash pump has not been running - the reservoir is still full. We thought it might be a bad cable but swapping the cable made no improvement. I didn't see any broken wires inside the box but it could be a bad pump. We have noticed some noisy RSSI at Hill Slough and think it might be the mirror heaters not being able to keep up with the wetter and windier conditions. We decide to bump up the heater power at these two sites. I raised the heater power on both mirrors from 5 to 20% and added two hours to each end of the time period 18:00 to 8:00 is now 16:00 to 10:00. The 7550 box had a bunch of water in the bottom again. I dried it out as best I could (removed the two tiny desiccant packs) and jammed a piece of 2x4 behind the bottom mount. This tilts the door to face slightly upwards and hopefully causes water to run away from the door seals which I think are leaking. At least this seemed to work at EE where we had a similar problem. The 7500 read: 436.4ppm CO2, 517.4mmol/m3 H2O, 13.2C, 102.3kPa, 99.5SS The 7700 read: 2.29ppm CH4, 83.9RSSI We left at about 15:00 PST |
2 photos found
20241218RR_SoilSensors1.jpg ( 2024-12-18 13:46:11 ) Full size: 933x1920
Soil heat flux and soil moisture sensor installation
20241218RR_SoilSensors2.jpg ( 2024-12-18 13:42:10 ) Full size: 933x1920
Soil heat flux and soil moisture sensor installation
3 sets found
No data found for RR_cam.
No data found for RR_met.
4 RR_flux graphs found