Wednesday 21st August 2013

Today was cold windy and overcast but when I stepped out the door there was a beautiful sun rise taking place. A very faint pink colour was lighting up the clouds from below. I took a couple of snaps but couldn’t capture the true beauty of the moment. Then my hands started to go off so I had to glove up quick smart. Once your hands have gone off it is extremely painful and you lose the movement of all your fingers. Then next step is the pain subsiding, your skin goes pail and waxy and slowly your fingers freeze solid killing all the tissue. Often out in the field it’s very difficult to warm them back up again and you could be in pain for an hour or so. For a day or so your hands will feel sore and lack movement so you know probably some damage has been done.

First up I took a look at my blown up 6m amplifier and found the four 5.1 ohm bias resistors that had burnt out. I searched through both Comms and Met and could only come up with 5.6 ohm resistors as 5.1 ohms is not a preferred value. My last chance is the Aironomy building. If there is none there then I will have to try 5.6 ohms and adjust the bias and hope for the best and hope the FET’s are OK too.

I started back on reordering and auditing and by lunch time I had had enough. I did a bit of research through some old field log books on a few places I would like to visit and while doing this I discovered some more field notes from the 1960’s so I scanned a lot of pages and then the printer jammed up. I then spent the next three hours stripping down the printer to find the problem. It was a mongrel job and eventually I found a tiny corner of a page jammed out of sight blocking a sensor. Talk about ruin your day. After dinner at the people’s night we watched some time laps movies from Jeremy and some photo’s from Luc of his time on Willis Island Met station.

Sunrise

My 6m amplifier guts

Two of the four fried resistors

Sunset