POLENET season 2 work

This year has been a bit different than last year, which was the first season of POLENET. Last year we spent most of our time installing new sites. This year we've been spending time installing new sites, but also servicing sites installed last year. This photo is from a new install this year at Deverall Isnald, and shows what a complete site setup should look like. I’m standing very professionally next to the frame that holds 4 solar panels (blue panels in front), wind generators (black wind mills on top), an iridium antenna (thin stick on top), and a met pack (white thing on top, collects temperature and wind data). In the background off to the right is the GPS antenna (gray mushroom). So I say this is what a site 'should' look like, because we’ve been finding some 'surprises' at the sites we are re-visiting this year, as you can see below in the photo from a location called Lonewolf Nunatak (standing in the photo is Joe, from UNAVCO). First off, we chose the stations to re-visit because we knew that they were down. We communicate with the stations through the iridium, and can get state of health info. So if we get bad state of health data, or if we can’t talk to the station at all, we know something is up and that we need to make a visit. We expected mostly electronic problems, but obviously that hasn't been the case. Definitely unexpected. Basically, the wind is too strong, and is ripping the front half of the frames off. This pulls the cables from the box, smashes the solar panels, and usually kills the wind generators as well. The picture to the left shows the fatal wounds to the solar panels, after we’ve flipped the broken frame front over. We think the culprits are the couplings used to hold the frame tubes together, which are cast aluminum. The picture below shows an 5/8" steel anchor bolt from Lonewolf, used to anchor the frame to the rock. The wind completely snapped it in half. Antarctica is no joke. The wind here is strong. Lonewolf is a particularly legendary site for wind, but since we've found a second downed frame, it's clear we are going to have to make some adjustments. We've temporarily fixed the problem, at least we hope, by adding braces to the joints that have been failing, but for next year, we will likely need to switch to steel couplings, and possibly re-think the solar panel configuration for particularly windy sites (the four solar panels basically act like a sail, catching wind and significantly increasing the strain on the frame).