SUNDAY, 03.01.09

0209: Days 11 & 12, (February 25 & 26)
In the last 48 hours, Mary Ann has suffered four aborts. The first two were due to a sensor in the emergency systems that recorded, incorrectly, the ascent weight or floats had deployed. The vehicles only need one such reading to abort. We dialed down the sensitivity initially and then received some software that requires more than one hit on the sensors. We also replaced one sensor. It seems to have done the trick. Then we had two successive software re-sets, again this is the software interface between the sonar and the operating system of the girls. This is an ongoing problem and although we received a ‘fix’ about a week ago, it clearly needs work. A lot of feedback has gone to Hydroid in the last 24 hours and we’ll see what they come up with.

During the missions that aborted for sensor issues, we received two lanes and five lanes of good data. During the first re-set abort we didn’t receive any good survey data, but the vehicle had been sent to cover a gap in the data (a holiday) before it went to regular survey and it did get that much of its mission complete before it aborted. Then the latest abort got six lanes of data. A standard mission is eight lanes. It’s ugly, but it ain’t worthless; we are still making data.

The other important issue of note here is the latest re-set seems to have brought some kind of data with it that has the team troubleshooting some new paths. In essence, they think they may have the re-set issues on the run to some degree. We’ve got three exceptionally smart electrical engineers out here — Greg Packard, Andy Sherrell and Lee Frey — and it could be we will end up fixing this software issue before Hydroid does. We shall see. They are working on it now and seem to be on a roll, so I am letting them alone. More on this tomorrow.

In the meantime, the part we scrambled for days to secure did make it to Honolulu yesterday, and then to Tarawa this morning. When Ted Waitt departed this morning, he passed it and sent kind regards to the crew out here. It is en route to us via Ted’s ship and is due to arrive on Tuesday morning at 0100.

It was ‘Steak Night’ out on the back deck. Seems like a month ago we had Ted’s crew over for that same Saturday meal. I’m keeping a happy thought. I have a feeling by early next week we might get everything dialed back in. That’s about it. Cheers.