January 2019 Service Run

Howdy y'all! Simone and I are back in the Mojave to fix up a few stations and collect the data since October while we're out here. So far our trip has been pretty inundated with rain. We arrived Monday mid-day and drove through the rain to a few stations. That was tough. We found 1 station had had its solar panels disconnected, so the battery was dead. Another station was having trouble connecting to the GPS and a third station had a mysteriously non-responsive sensor. After reconnecting the panels to the first station, it was up and running the next day. We also revisited the sensor with the GPS issue the next day and it was fine. The third site, with the non-responsive sensor, we couldn't catch in the field, but was a clear issue once we were analyzing the data back in the lab. It turns out, the sensor only unlocks when it is within 2.5˚ of level and this sensor was pretty far from level. We replaced it, buried it deeper, and made sure it was securely level. Once we did that, the sensor unlocked its masses and is now recording ground motion.

Our second day, Tuesday, was a bit more intense, but all the stations were operating perfectly. Rain came down all morning and well into the afternoon. However, we left early, arriving at our first site at around 8am and after hiking more than 10miles total, we were able to service 6 stations and double check two stations from Monday. So we're one and a half days in and we've already got 9 stations done! We've got 10 more to do and 3 days of work left.

Simone in the rain en route to a station.

An atypically photogenic station


Little selfie at MOJH

There's something magical about the fog rolling over the hills in the desert.

The little red cactus that could.




Meet Jameson, our Jeep and perfect field vehicle.

Ah! Working on a station under an umbrella.



A view of GuVu - the phone app we use to check on our stations.

Another part of GuVu - this is the lower half of the screen which shows as the live seismic channels.

Over 10 miles and 73 floors on Tuesday. Somebody please tell my doctor.











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