Wednesday, July 9, 2014

The Ice is Out

Back in Barrow for the rest of the week. It was foggy when the plane landed mid-morning and for most of the day. But it cleared for a couple of hours in the afternoon. The ice finally moved away from shore last week so now there is a cold, damp wind instead of just a cold wind. I still thought the view of the ocean was pretty nice. The chunks of ice had looked drab until the sun had burned through the cloud. I heard that it was sunny & warm for the 4th of July festivities.

This is the view to the northwest from the BARC facility. The old NARL power plant is the yellow building on the left side of the frame and beyond that is the Arctic Ocean. There is still remnants of snow whereever the snow fences are. This afternoon, we were going to be setting up another antenna on the roof of the BARC. Hopefully the wind will have died down by then.

Wednesday afternoon update - The wind didn't die down but we only had to come in to warm up a couple of times. The wind was blowing pretty good on roof of the BARC. The diamond antennae are for the old Alverion radio system and the vertical panels are the new sector antennae. The one closest to Sam is the 90° sector that I had installed last month and the other is a new 60° sector 21db antenna we just installed. It is aimed due south to cover the Barrow Environmental Observatory aka the BEO. We will be installing a small flat panel antenna at one of the labs within the BEO maybe tomorrow morning after I get a few more things configured.

12 comments:

  1. Richard:

    I am not saying this but I was just thinking to myself how nice it would be if it were just a few degrees cooler. We are getting a heat wave and I don't feel like putting on gear to ride and sweat. I want to wear shorts and T-shirt and enjoy the A/C in the car. 40ºF sounds good about now . . .

    I keep thinking that there must be a way to do the Barrow stuff by remote from Fairbanks. There must be an APP for that

    bob
    Riding the Wet Coast


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    1. I have a new employee starting this week in Barrow so I need to show him how things are done up here, introduce him to his colleagues, and show him around town. Hard to do all this remotely.

      Plus I wanted to install a new 5.8 GHz antenna panel. Hard to do that remotely either.

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  2. Ice blue waters sans ice... looks pretty.

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    1. Once the sun came out the water was looking pretty nice. Otherwise, everything looked grey.

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  3. You have a minion in Barrow now? Congrats!

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    1. I don't think that "minion" is the right word. But I am happy to find someone who is excited about being here.

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  4. Gotta love it when the ice goes out ... no matter where you are. Just happens that it happens a couple of months later for you than me. Enjoy the summer.

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    1. I'm told that it just went out last weekend. Everyone here is anxious to get their boat out on the water...

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  5. Antennae are mysteries to me. Cool though, in both senses. Snow. Shudders.

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    1. Antennae are also a mystery to me but I'm amazed at how the are aimable. The performance of this wireless system is pretty amazing. And that isn't snow, just ice. And the white in the distance is floating sea ice.

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  6. Okay, if you had to go in and warm up, I know it was cold.

    I really like the colors in the first picture. The blue water combined with the glow of the sun.

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    1. It felt pretty cold especially since we were trying to get bolts and nuts lined up which is almost impossible with gloves.

      When the sun comes out the water is a beautiful, very dark blue. It also looks very cold and the floating ice just reinforces that idea.

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