A tough week lies behind us, for which reason there were no posts. At Monday, we visited the potential site and made a preliminary placement plan. In the evening, with the help of Brian we brought the two heaviest pieces – the filter sampler and the wet deposition collector – up to the place. It took 20 minutes of driving for 500 m distance, as the ‘road’ is extremely rocky.
On Tuesday, we had to learn that due to electricity restrictions we need to move by 50 m to another place. So, another place, another plan. As Brian had to leave in the morning, we had to ask for local support to carry over the wet deposition sampler. Nevertheless, in the afternoon we placed the instruments and bolted them into the rocky ground. Gísli, the technician of the Ríf station, is fortunately an elecitrican and helped us preparing the connection. In the evening, we had most of the systems in place.
Wednesday was reserved for cabling, internet and electricity connections, which took most of the day. In the afternoon, just before the forecasted rain arrived, we could switch on and start with the software setup. As the internet worked flawlessly, this could be done by Konrad while sitting in the warmth of the guesthouse.
Thursday started with a lot of rain, giving us the opportunity to finalize the remaining dry deposition sampler prototype. While Thomas was in the basement preparing the mechanical parts, Konrad programmed the system and learned quite a bit about stepper motor technics. By two in the night, finally the system was ready to go.
Today we introduce the station setup and the sampling work to the local caretakers of Ríf Research and cooperating orgnisations, Hrönn, Linda, Jóhanna and Ágústa. They volunteer for the station care, so many thanks for that! While currently all their work is still done from the office in the guesthouse, in near future they plan on having a small lab in the local school building. Today’s plans foresee the mounting of the dry deposition sampler, but the weather isn’t favorable for electricity connection yet, delivering considerable wind and rain. So we wait until a weaker raining period, before we can finish the station setup in the evening.
All in all, the week was strainuous, but successful. Some sad news arrived, however, from the OPC in Grímsstaðir, which suddenly started producing weird results. Konrad suspects that it swallowed a fly, but nevertheless we have to go there tomorrow and check what we can do.