From our morning photo session. View from the site.
Jason and Dave's radiometer stand manufacturing center. Give them
a few radiometers and a pile of scrap, they'll get it cobbled together
in no time!
Daily Nauru99 Report --- Nauru Island --- 99-7-5 (186)
Time: 02:00Z Local Time: 14:00
Last data available 00:00Z
Surface Wind: Max gust 9.2 m/s; current mean wind speed 0.4 m/s @ 141
deg
Temperature Celsius: 26-31 C; current temp 30.4 C
Relative Humidity: 58-87%; current rh 63%
Precipitation Last 24 hours: 0.4 mm
MWR: vap=4.3 cm liq=.005 cm (22:00)
Ceilometer: scattered cloud at 500-1000 m; occasional thick cloud
at 2 km
Lidar: (0-0700 only) scattered cloud at 500-1000 m
Visual Observations: Cloudiness more convective in nature today.
Had a rousing thunderstorm last night, at least on the hotel side of the
island.
Thus no phones. Apparently didn't rain as much on the site side. We're
under attack by skiers. They've built a catapult from their skis and bindings
across the road. Clever devils have made phosphate balls by sticking them
together using the Menen Hotel soup of the day, cream of celery. We're
huddling in the vans, safe for now, but the incessant "splopping"
on the roof is driving us mad. Have decided by vote to send out the most
expendable member to keep the radiometer domes clean. Hope Jason makes
it. (Well, he's a only a graduate student, after all...)
Instrument Status
1) ARCS2 Site Instruments
I knew I should have kept my big mouth shut. From Robin Perez: MWR
down from 2200-0240; data unrecoverable. MPL down
from 0700-0240; data unrecoverable. Of course, I suppose I could blame
it on Conner. He's leaving tonight, anyway. Had a visit by Duane Hazen
from NOAA today, and we determined that we are NOT seeing interference
with the MMCR from the ship. What we thought was interference originally
Duane explained was Nyquest wrapping on the display. So we're back to running
both, which is good, and Duane has instructed us what to look for that
is REAL interference, and when it is likely to occur. All other instruments
working well.
2) Nauru99 Ancillary Instruments
Had a minor problem with the RSR PC, it hung up over night. Fortunately
Chuck Pavloski visited the site today, and thinks he fixed it. All other
ancillary instruments working well.
Commentary
ARCS2 Tours Pty. Ltd. was doing a whopping business today. Had numerous
boatloads of visitors from the Ron Brown. Tours of the site, tours top
side, tours of the island, hotel,... Though I'm not quite sure if it was
the attraction of seeing the ARCS site, or just being able to walk more
than 20 feet without having to turn around. Either way, it kept us hopping
and mostly out of trouble. Also this morning, the Cessna did a "photography
run" as it's last flight of the experiment. The film crew was on the
aircraft filming the island, while at the same time we were occupying the
van rooftops to grab pictures of the plane and Ron Brown. I must say, they
sure can fly that Cessna low when they want to! Now that the flights are
done, we're working on getting a brief (1 day) intercomparison of the Cessna
radiometers with the ARCS at the site. We've been experiencing a number
of brief power outages this afternoon. Things still running, ARCS systems
seem to be handling it well.