Engineering mtg

Present: Birch, Jensen, Roman, Pargett, Preston, Marin, Gomes

Absent: Scholin, Everlove

S. California

1.  Trip-planning

• Paul Dimeo of the Aquarium of the Pacific has been put in touch with Kim Reisenbechler RE: divers.  Should have this nailed down by early next week.
• Scott contacted by George and Hai of OCSD.  Apparently they needed proof of insurance and liability before allowing us on the roof.  they've been directed to Pinto so we are good to go when we recover the antenna.  They've made a request for one of them to attend the deployment.  Would be very good politically to take one out with us.
• Coast Guard has told Mike Kelly we do NOT need a Notice to Mariners; there are already so many moorings out in that area that we are covered under one or more.  Just let them know when we recover.
• We will load on Shana Rae, Thursday, March 25 at 10am.  Jim will email Jim this info.  
• E/M cables; both fabricated, now to start testing.  Float material is being machined.  Scott figuring out float spacing.
• new anchor line to arrive by March 24.

Deployment:

• Team will be Roman, Scott, Jim.  Brent will be available via phone for troubleshooting (he leaves 9pm April 2)
• Still deciding best way to get equipment down to Newport Beach, but will leave Weds, March 31, load boat and deploy Apr 1, return to MBARI Apr 2.
• Will build a full dress of mooring in high bay before disassembling, so we know we have everything when we arrive down south.

Other issues

A.  Betty and hand problem

• hand still flaking and trouble-shooting is in stasis while Cheri in Falmouth and we prepare for deployment.

B.  Doug--update on DWSM

• There is now power back to the core.
• New switches and ba adssembly in sampling can with serrated clips; hopefully no leaking now.
• Resample side has not been opened, but will open when kevlar gears come in.  Then we'll replace switches in bag.
• Bill Ussler has seen DWSM and better understands what we mean when we say we depressurize water.  He leaves on cruise tonight to test our wand fixture at the methane mound to see if depressurization causing clogging with precipitating hydrate.
• Need to double-check weights and  space on WF.  Find out how many hours from port the location is.  this will help decide where we should open ball, should we need to.
• Some minor software development needed for wand--Brent/Doug/Scott to talk about before Brent leaves.
• Scott to talk to Pete G. about ISMS issues:  batteries he's getting for us, which housing will we be using to mount to elevator.  Must still mount computer in the ball.

C.  2G camera issue

• Original Starlight cameras were good
• Then came out with higher speed USB camera (f series) that did'nt work with our slower USB
• Now they have the r-speed, which seems to work at older, low speeds, but somtimes there are artifacts; restarting makes them go away.
• If our long term goal is to reduce power, Wayne has found board designed to work at 200mW (vs. 2.5W).  We should use him to build a carrier board that would benefit both 2G and 3G systems.  This goal is good, but will probably not be addressed until our deployment season is well under way.

D.  Spending out of Moore Foundation $$

• Doug to get price for portable He leak detector
• Brent to get models/price for 4 HP computers, and old email about a cheap, low power radio to test
• Scott to get prices on 4 batteries and chargers for running cores in the lab.
• any remaining money will buy reagents through Roman and Chris P.