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.
 
 
Cheers,
Chuck