Field Notes

Gilbert Tract: 2025-03-07 09:10:00 (DOY 66)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others:

Summary: Reinstalled two solar batteries hopefully not to be stolen again. Set phenocam time, swapped miniCH4 at channel, installed calibrated EXO at channel, new batteries for bird song recorder.

Gilbert Tract
2025-03-07

Day two. I arrived at 9:10 to reinstalled two batteries and catch some things we missed yesterday. It was clear and sunny with a cold wind. The air felt very dry.

Yesterday we bought an aluminum truck tool chest box. It is plenty big enough for four batteries and has a built in key locking mechanism. It only weighs about 40lbs so I could lift it to the platform by myself after I removed the plastic action packer. I bolted the box to the boardwalk using the bottom half of the steel straps inside and four security bolts. I put two batteries in the strap nearest the charge controller and had to struggle to get the top half of the steel strap on the batteries. I drilled a hole in the box for the power cable and powered everything up. I broke the upper cross brace on the west side of the scaffolding - it was pretty rusted.

I checked that everything seemed to be running at the tower. The phenocam clock was off. It had already stored some images from yesterday with the wrong time. At 02/18 20:33 I synced the clock to 03/07 10:50 PST.
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I went to the channel around 11am. Two fisheries people were out on the channel in kayaks. I pulled up the sensor cart but it was close to high tide and it stopped about half way out of the water. With waders I could reach all the sensors. I removed miniCH4 sn 38-576-25 which was reading -10 for CH4 and installed sn 38-574-25. I set up the new miniCH4 for timed readings 5 readings every 15min saving the average of the five. I set its clock to local standard time and first reading to 11:45:00.

I plugged in the EXO, unpowered the CR6 while I got its power line reconnected and restarted the CR6. The EXO had blue and red LEDs lit before I put it in the water. I straightened out the cables and pushed everything back into the water.

On my way out I stopped and put new batteries in the Song Micro reattaching it to the tower.

I left at about 11:30 PST

4 photos found

20250307GT_NewBatteryBox.jpg ( 2025-03-07 10:34:58 ) Full size: 1920x1440
view of field site

20250307GT_InsideNewBatteryBox.jpg ( 2025-03-07 10:34:18 ) Full size: 1440x1920
view of field site

20250306GT_FloatingSensors.jpg ( 2025-03-06 13:48:43 ) Full size: 1440x1920
Floating sensors replaced back in the water after downloading their data. The miniCH4 is on a new PVC float and wired for power/comms directly at the tower, so we don't need a battery pack anymore.