The Surface BIC (light sensor) was original to this station's installation in September of 2006, and was replaced on this trip. Its cable was cracked by sun and weather and was also replaced.
The Vaisala WXT510 (Weather Transmitter) was replaced. At the same time, an adjustment was made to the orientation of its mount to correct a 17° error (affecting wind direction readings) introduced during its last replacement in August of 2007.
The Shallow CTD, originally deployed in May of 2007, was replaced by divers.
Perhaps most significantly, the SeaBird SBE-29 Pressure Sensor was disconnected from the station and its cable removed. This instrument's cable was not our standard "fishbite" cable, and in recent months it had worn through to bare wire at the waterline where it had been rubbing up against plastic zip ties wrapped around the pylon. This turned out to have unfortunate effects on the station electronics: many of the analog measurements made by the datalogger were intermittently returning null readings, including the wind speed reported by the Wind Monitor / Electronic Compass, the standalone Air Temperature Sensor's reading, and the datalogger's own voltage readings. It seems likely that the intermittent nature of these problems was due to the action of waves breaking against the damaged part of the cable and occasionally shorting its power/ground wires. Other station functions (logging to memory, transmitting via satellite, and RS-232 serial instrument communications) do not appear to have been impacted.
These issues appear to have been resolved by removing the SBE-29. The datalogger and standalone air temperature sensor were both tested on land and appear to be functioning properly. All analog measurements appear to be reporting correctly now. A sheet of rubber was wrapped around the pylon at the waterline, between the cables and the zip ties, to prevent this problem from recurring.
The orientation of the masts of the wind sensors were visually measured with a compass. The WXT mast is mounted at approximately 97° and the mast of the Wind Monitor / Electronic Compass at approximately 340°. The Wind Monitor and Electronic Compass were last replaced in March of 2008; when they reach their deployment lifetimes, it is anticipated that we will eliminate the Electronic Compass from this station and use a manually-oriented Wind Monitor, with offsets added to the logger programming as required.
All dataparser configurations have been updated and data from the station are once again appearing in the near-realtime web reports.