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ONLINE DATA ACQUISITION & DISSEMINATION


The following "Lessons Learned" have been submitted by NWSREP's (DAPM/OPL/HMT/MIT). These situations are not uncommon and the solutions presented may help you in the field. If you have similar experiences (Lessons Learned) that you would like to share, please send an email to:

LESSONS emailLEARNED



FPU "LESSONS LEARNED"

COOP MAINTENANCE AND MODIFICATION NOTES


The following "Lesson Learned" is from John Orgler DAPM/DDC.

Case #1 / MMTS: I had an MMTS occasionally showing upward and downward "spikes" in Max and Min Temps. They seemed to occur only during a certain period during the afternoon and early evening hours and only during inclement weather. The observer had installed a new fence charger in the same room and plugged it in to the same outlet. After multiple trips to the site, and one trip with our ESA, we had replaced everything associated with the MMTS Unit, sensor, display, cable, gray box and surge suppressor. In addition, we installed a UPS unit since the observer was at the end of the AC line and may be experiencing "Brownouts" or minor voltage losses. When that didn't fix the problem, as a last resort, I moved the display away from the fence charger. Lo and behold, that resolved the problem. It may have been some sort of interference from the unit.

Case #2 / MMTS: I had a site showing unusually low morning temps. I replaced the sensor and display and reworked the MMTS plugs. It occurred again. What I found was that the new MMTS plugs do not snap on to the sensor and Nimbus display. You have to "grind out" a little plastic from the plugs, with a knife or a dremel tool, to get them to "snap" into place properly. The plug was just "floating" on the connector plug. Even taping it into place did not help.

Case #3 / MMTS: My last site was reporting unusually high Temps. occasionally. It was only happening once or twice a week. I reworked the plugs since the display and sensor had been replaced recently when the equipment was relocated. The cable from the sensor to the gray box was also brand new. I reluctantly decided to replace the cable from the house to the gray box. I say reluctantly because the observer built a deck over the top of the cable. Evidently, the cable was laid on the ground, instead of burying it, when the deck was built. Once we pulled the old cable out, we found a bare spot in the cable. It was bare right done to both wires. The observer told us afterwards that his 2 little dogs occasionally crawl under the deck to get out of bad weather. I guess they chewed through the cable.

The following "Lesson Learned" is from Joe Alfieri OPL/ABQ.

MMTS: One of the interesting things that happened to me was at 2 different National Ruins sites I went to check an MMTS sensor. At one site there were bees coming out of the Sensor as I approached. I did not have sprayin the truck that day so I went inside to borrow some and before they found it another person came along and said "You can't kill the bees". So they had to contact their headquarters and get a smoke team in to put the bees to sleep (or whatever it does) and then they took the sensor apart and cleaned it out. The other site there were only a few bees and I sprayed them and when I took the sensor apart half the metal sensor was covered by a mud nest. Another time we pulled a post and sensor from a site and put it in the truck and when we went to get it out bees started pouring out of the sensor so we sprayed. Luckily we no longer had our open 8 seet van or the whole inside might have been filled with angry bees.

The following "Lesson Learned" is from Dave Wilfing DAPM/BMX.

UPPER AIR: Aging gracefully is not one of my strong points. As my life's journey takes me deeper into the "golden years," I find that my eyesight is fading nearly as fast as Lens Crafters can make me a new pair of tri-focals. This has made performing the quarterly Upper Air comparative increasingly difficult for me, since decent vision is pretty much a basic requirement for tracking a balloon with a theodolite...especially when a GP26 looks very similar to a soap bubble after about 15 minutes. Because of this, I tried using an HM30 balloon on my most recent comparative, and much to my glee, I found that it was significantly easier to follow due mostly to its brighter color, but also because the shape of the balloon doesn't distort nearly as much, providing you with many more minutes before it appears less like a spot and more like a bubble. I also try to enlist an additional set of eyes to read and record the theodolite angles, while I keep mine on the balloon, since adjusting my vision between the two tasks usually results in either reading the angles incorrectly, losing the balloon, or both...and, of course, a subsequent outburst of inappropriate language.

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