Sept. 25 Update

This morning's weather was much better than the past two days since the rain has let up. There were still some brief showers, but not for hours on end like yesterday.

I was able to quickly setup the SmartUPS system along configuring the network interface card. Now we will be able to log into the UPS system and reboot it if necessary as well as read off some statistics. I was surprised to see that the battery was 100% whenever I first turned on the SmarUPS system, so I decided to discharge the battery and give it a fresh charge. I was able to power my laptop as well as one of the 48V supplies for over an hour on the SmartUPS' battery.

The computer system was shutdown in the afternoon to change the AC distribution so that the two QNX computers as well as the internet switch are powered off of the SmartUPS. Also with the computers, the smaller CPU fan in the timing computer began making a shrieking in the afternoon that at first sounded like a bird was in the shack. As it didn't seem as though the fan would even last through the night, it was replaced with a fan on a never been used motherboard exactly like the motherboard in the timing computer. As well, the case fan was removed and replaced with a case fan from an old and unused computer case. This should dramatically help the temperature within the timing computer case.

Some attempts were made to measure the transmitter output power, but the high power attenuator apparatus may not be working properly. Much lower than expected signal levels were measured on the scope, but it was observed that not being connected to the output of a transmitter gave the same results. In between tasks here, an additional transmitter was plugged in so that 11 of the 16 transmitters are now working.

Tomorrow will be the last day at the site and expects to be full with measuring and rechecking levels within the receiver front end board as well as taking a look at some transmitters.


Original Posting

I arrived at Goose Bay - Happy Valley on the evening of the 23rd and was welcomed with great weather conditions! A light rain, 20 to 30 mph wind, and about 39F temperatures make for a great day in Labrador. It was quite the shock from the mild weather of the mid-Atlantic.

For the first day at the radar site I got the replacement 50V power supply in and hooked up two transmitters on this supply, #1 and #2. I also spent some time pulling out the lower power Mini-Circuits amp on the RXFE board and put in the replacement ZFL-2500-VH. I played some games with signal levels here and there and in the end I have 0.8 Vpp coming out of the phasing matrix cards and read about 3 to 4 V_dc on the AGC output. So, without directly measuring it, the transmitters seem to be putting out the nominal power output.

That was this afternoon, most of the morning was sorting through a few things in the shack as well as coming up with a better way to plug in the 50V supplies and the computers. After picking up a few supplies at the hardware store as well as LSSI, I was able to distribute the AC power around the shack better.

While at LSSI, I also was able to pick up several deliveries for parts that we ordered in the past few weeks. Of these, a brand new SmartUPS system with a network interface card. I'll take to setting that up and configuring it tomorrow morning at it takes a while for those to charge up before they're ready to use.