After a disappointing end to the day on Friday we gave ourselves an extra hour in the morning to recover.  After returning to the site we began to work on some of the issues that remain.

Tim Martin began work on setting up the Virtual Machines and installing a guest network hub and a hub for the BBSS on the instrument network. He also worked on changing out the power plugs for the MWR so we can use our Power Distribution Module to run it instead of the few remaining plugs in the GP van.

Rich Coulter and Durga Kaffle went back to Christie Peak to begin installing the railings on the AOS van and the mounts for the radio link.  Rich and Durga had to run up and down the mountain a few times to make adjustments to the mounts with the power tools at the Valley site.  Unfortunately, there isn’t any power at the Christie Peak site yet.

Mike Ritsche and Mike Turner continued to work on the BBSS system which had failed the night before along with some troublesome leaks in the balloon fill system.  They were able to get around the fill issue after a couple of trips to the local Ace Hardware (outside of which someone was selling roasted chili peppers—yum!).  Some spare parts will still have to be sent from ANL to get the fill system back to optimal performance but the fix will allow balloons to be filled and launched.

The BBSS system turned out to be much more difficult than the fill system. One technique after another was tried until we were all about to give up.  A huge thank you goes out to Chris Keenan from Vaisala, Inc., who came to our rescue on this Saturday afternoon. He sure went above and beyond the call of duty since today is his normal day off (and he called us from the hammock in his backyard).  Chris suggested a few additional adjustments and we were able to launch the AMF2’s first radiosonde.

Like the fill system, the adjustments left us with a system that is currently less than optimal as it is running in “stand alone” mode and not connected to the network.  We hope to continue testing tomorrow and get the BBSS back on the network.  Even if we are unable to get the system back to optimal performance we have a working system that we can use on Monday for observer training.