The Field Site

Schematic Diagram of Field Setup

The MFR-7, the SPUV and the YESDAS are all currently located on the rooftop of Fisher Hall, a three story building on the campus of MTU. Michigan Tech is located in Houghton on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (47.06^o North Latitude, 88.36^o West Longitude).

The instruments are mounted on a railing that surrounds an elevated walkway on the roof. The rooftop is flat and is never in the shadows during the day. Right now, the MFR-7 is correctly positioned and aligned with the sun. The SPUV is mounted to a pole pointing upward until the tracker arrives.

The MFR-7 and SPUV are both connected to the YESDAS, which is attached to the railing using cable ties. Once per minute, data is written from each radiometer to the YESDAS. The YESDAS is connected to a Sparc 1 Station located inside the mechanical closet on the roof of Fisher Hall. The connection is made via a 100ft null modem cable.

The Sparc 1 Station rests inside. Due to the remote location of the instruments and computer, it is necessary that the entire system be automated. First, a program was written that uses xtty and speaks the language of the YESDAS. This program downloads the data in binary form from the YESDAS to the Sparc 1 Station. After completing the download, another program uses callang to convert the binary data to text data. There is a download every six hours. Another program was written to combine the four downloaded files from each day into one large file using rsrsplit. This program also tries to run a Langley Analysis. The Unix tools can be downloaded from the Atmospheric Science Research Center.