I've been updating my data spreadsheets and I noticed that the Port Everglades station has been dropping more satellite transmissions lately. The problem is intermittent and from the diagnostics it is related to GPS acquisition timeouts. So either the GPS subsystem is failing in the old SAT-HDR-GOES (bad) or there's a problem with the GPS antenna itself (not as bad).
The problem seems to have begun at the end of April (on April 27th, more or less). This doesn't coincide with any of Jack's visits and it doesn't follow very closely on the April 16th work, so it doesn't seem like it's a result of moving things around in the box.
We dropped 6 records in March (which is normal), 11 records in April, and 23 records so far in May. So the problem might be getting worse but it's still not serious. And you could argue that the near-real-time transmissions are of secondary importance for this site since Jack (I think) depends more heavily on the 6-minute datasets that we retrieve from the memory cards.
Anyhow, something to keep an eye on. Keep in mind that we don't have any more working SAT-HDR-GOES units. We do have some GPS antennae but I can't be sure if they're functional without a SAT-HDR-GOES to test on.
This Study in the Port Everglades Shipping Channel in Florida is a collaboration between several partners, to investigate the potential pollutant loading characteristics of the Port Everglades Inlet into the Southeast Florida coastal ocean, including an ecologically and economically important section of the Florida Reef Tract. Additional information about the FACE Port Everglades Study can be found here: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/themes/CoastalRegional/projects/FACE/PtEverg.htm
Thursday, May 27, 2010
some transmission problems
In an email written May 27th, 2010, I wrote:
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