Yesterday I woke up early in anticipation for my first Jason watch in the control van from 0400 to 0800. Unfortunately they did not need my excitement and me because Jason didn’t go into the water until 0800 so I went back to bed.
After Jason went in, the morning was filled with an assortment of tasks and tidbits. I helped John bring the giant eyeball, the camera mounted on its tripod, down from the 0-2 deck to the staging bay where is could be tested and prepared to be deployed later that evening. I went to a meeting about how exactly Jason, Medea, the junction box and the camera pyramid were all going to be deployed that night. Were it not for the pages of cartoon diagrams showing exactly what extremely expensive mass hung from which line or wire, I would still be trying to figure out step one: put Jason in the water. I helped Jefrey and Cammy mount the grates holding the instruments that Roger had been testing in the lab back onto the AMM. They didn’t want to go, but after a bit of nudging and wiggling, we were able to wedge these in. It’s incredible that everyday someone onboard seems to arrive at a problem that, if not solved, could close the curtains on this show. However, the moment these problems arise the brains start ticking and the fingers start twiddling with zip ties and nuts and bolts until the problem is a thing of the past.
At 1600 I had my first Jason watch, during which they actually did require my presence. Jason was recovered at 1730 so I only remained in the cockpit, the control van as some may call it, for a short while. During that time, Mary, one of the geologists, trained me in the ways of labeling DVD recordings of the three main cameras on Jason. It is surprisingly demanding work as you must keep the abbreviations, which are varying combinations of the letters A, B, C, P and W, straight in your head. The real problem is that they all rhyme, so mental repetition is of no use, and they all look the same in the dark. James, the Jason data processer, trained me in the ways of logging events into the computer, which they call the ‘virtual van’ – as if I didn’t already feel like I’m in a dream world in the dark den of big blue screens and robotic arms.
After my watch I went to sleep though I wanted to stay up for the deployment party to which almost all of the back deck equipment had been invited. Jason was going to be there, and of course his date Meada; the camera tripod would have to come and leave early; and the life – and by that I mean power – of the party, the J-box, would make a guest appearance at midnight. Though I do love parties – and any chance to wear my hard hat – I had my first full length Jason watch at 0400 the next morning and knew I needed to put my hard hat’s contents to rest.
0400 came sooner than I’d expected and the cockpit was freezing. Electronics apparently don’t appreciate the tropical climate as much as most, so the cockpit conditioned out every last drop of warm, humid air. Wrapped up like a burrito in an extra blanket from the staircase, I mean linen closet, I watched as Jason approach the seafloor along with the J-box.
My responsibilities were to take pictures with Jason’s cameras if a Kodak moment arose, and to log all events. Herein lies the challenge of logging: what constitutes and event? The obvious ones are laid out for you in a form – Jason on bottom, Jason install homer beacon. But what if Jason leaves the bottom to move 10 m to the left? What if a foot long red shrimp whizzes by? I find foot long shrimp quite eventful and moving to the left quite dull, but those who rely on this log might think otherwise.
As Jason hovered off the muddy floor near the cable termination, he found the imprint of the observatory that this group had attempted to install three years ago. The navigator spent about an hour inching the ship 10 m this way and that trying to pull Medea, and consequently the J-box, to hover over that imprint. It takes about 15 minutes to move the J-box 10 m because the ship can only move at a tenth of a knot while towing Medea. Then that 10 m at the surface has to be translated down almost 5 km of cable to Medea and the J-box. At 0800, the J-box was almost in place and it was time for the burrito to unwrap and grab breakfast.
By the time I woke up from my post-breakfast nap, there were many items to check off the to do list in the lab. Jason had positioned the J-box in the imprint of the last observatory and had connected it to the termination cable. Power flowed through the connection as expected however the optical signal from Station Aloha did not reach Makaha, the cable station on Oahu, with the amplitude expected. As with the other problems that arrive at the party uninvited, this one was met with a flurry of brain cells clicking and fingers fiddling. A number of solutions were proposed, developed and mulled over for the rest of the day.
Jason spent most of the day down there, not coming back up until the end of my next watch at 2000. He inspected the termination in more detail than the survey dive of the day before, looking at PMI grips and the connectors again. He tried disconnecting and reconnecting the cables in hopes that the insufficient signal was a result of a faulty first connection. This was not the solution to our problem so the brains continue to buzz. Jason did however have success in locating and repositioning the camera tripod, which had been tossed out of the party and let free fall to the bottom of the ocean the night before. John and the rest of us were quite relieved to find it safe and reunited with the J-box after a long journey down.
While not on watch in the afternoon I assisted Jefrey and Cammy in switching the batteries and reprogramming the instruments for the thermistor array that will float above the observatory. As with everything on this ship except the zip ties, the thermistors are expensive and sensitive so when I’m holding one for Jefrey, I’m gripping it with the full force of my excitement – but not too tightly because the inductors are ceramic and say “Fragile!” We cleaned the o-rings, which seal the instrument and play bouncer to any water molecules who may want to join the party. Then we removed the old batteries and put fresh ones in to give the instruments the longest possible life underwater—hopefully up to 4 years. Thermistor ID01 decided that everyone wasn’t quite thinking hard enough yet, so spontaneously stopped working. We disconnected and reconnected it. We removed the new batteries and replaced them with the old. We tested Thermistor ID02. Just as we were about to resort to the every popular banging one’s head against the table on which thousands of dollars of equipment lay, Thermistor ID01 decided to function. Again, with the proper amount of storming in our brains, the show will still go on.
No comments:
Post a Comment