WEDNESDAY, 04.29.09

0751: From Andy Sherrell to Chris Nutter
Sounds good, Chris. C it is! It has been concluded the area north of 21 is clear from A-B-C. Thanks for the quick response. Keep me posted on any updates, and I will do the same for you.

Have a good day; hope it is getting warmer up there.

0830: From Ted Waitt
One thing we haven’t discussed recently is after C, does it make any sense to image 2006 targets?

1258: Response To Ted Waitt
I don’t think there is anything there they like. Andy Sherrell went over them a couple times awhile back when Elgen Long and he were talking. I’ll ask him again, but I’m pretty certain the consensus was no. I’ve got them working on a data review, too, so that if we see something that — after the experience of the entire job — has us second-guessing ourselves in our earlier work, we can re-image as we run down C alongside A/B. So far, they’re not excited about anything.

We just had a chat with Chris Nutter and Michael DiBello who are thinking if we finish C, we should try and run some boxes down where E used to be, about the middle boxes from the flight path. We drew up a grid (attached) and sent it to them and told them that if we switched to this pattern (as we should if we are going to see those boxes so that we keep everything contiguous from here on out and not lose time due to switching DOT fields), we would likely lose some C boxes. They said to stick to C. So we’re still on the current plan. I will forward you the last on the string that has the whole conversation between Andy and Nutter. We just got it a little bit ago.

I am in the middle of a ton of e-mails right now, but one of them is my report for last night. We had a problem with Ginger yesterday — she came back up with the strangest issue we’ve seen yet. For some reason, she switched her range scale to 328 meters instead of 600; we’ve never even used this range. So, there are lane-sized holidays in the data from her first run in C. We did some troubleshooting and found neither rhyme nor reason for it. Looked at the records and found we could add a new check to confirm range scale by checking out the waveforms and rates on the surface to ensure the vehicle is on the correct range. We found the range changed before she went into the water after her pre-dive checks. There is no explanation to me yet on this. We planned her back into the same box, confirmed the wave forms and rates and sent her down. It’s another mystery fault and we think we got a walk-around to detect it, but it cost us a day with that vehicle. To be honest with you, with today’s issue and the operator error from the end of E/F, if we lose one more mission, the best we are likely to achieve is to finish C by the 12th.

I will forward the e-mail from Chris Nutter right after this with the attached grid.

0921: From Ted Waitt
That sucks. Sounds like people are getting tired and making stupid mistakes. Can’t have that. Yelling at them won’t help; TLC might to get them to take some time. Or rotate and have them show other people how to do it. Just mix it up some, can break the monotony.

Assume you are talking the D lane on this image?

1325: To Ted Waitt
Ah, yeah, D. My bad. Yeah, I have been all smiles and gentle persuasions. I don’t know if that one was a user error though. So far, there is no explanation whatsoever, and the check we added to make sure it didn’t happen is a new one. Morale is pretty good lately, lots of smiles the last couple days. But we’re all tired, no doubt. I’ve been waiting for the right moment in the last couple days to remind everyone to be deliberate, double check their work, tell them this is the home stretch and that any mistakes are going to shine like neon at this point. I’ll do that today, very upbeat though. Thanks.