Sadly this is the last full day for Durga Kafle and Michael Ritsche.  They will be heading back to the Chicago area after 17 days here at Steamboat Springs.  Michael, Durga, Karen and Mike Turner spent the day doing calibration checks on the surface meteorological systems.  The ORG, PWD, Barometer and T/RH probe were all checked and validated.  This proved to be good training for Karen and a refresher for Mike Turner.

Following the checks, the replacement IRT arrived for the failed one on the GRNDRAD system.  It was installed and the lower two tower sections were cranked up to get the radiometers and the wind sensor up to the standard 10m height.

Later in the day they continued checking and fine tuning the leveling of radiometers and platforms.  This will be an ongoing and iterative process throughout the deployment.  Michael Ritsche got all the display screens and scripts running so that data from the SKYRAD, GNDRAD, MFRSR, SPN and MET systems are in the expected locations waiting to be picked up by the collection system.

Spare parts for the balloon fill manifold system arrived also and Mike Turner finished putting it together.  We decided to launch another balloon with the system now running as normal.  Durga Kafle did the actual launch since he uses the data quite often for lidar validations but has never launched an actual radiosonde.  Congratulations Durga, the first of many we suspect.

Rich and Tim continued to provide support and assistance to all of our visitors at the Thunderhead site where the Operations Van is located.  They have decided to stay an extra couple of days to work on a few loose ends with regard to the Operations van and to greet Stephen Springston and Art Sedlacek who arrive on Friday to begin work on the AOS van that is installed at Christie Peak.  Rich mentioned that Karen and Mike Turner would also go up to the Thunderhead site tomorrow to begin training on the ASSIST II and SWACR.