ULTRAMOOR
Principal Investigators: Nelson G. Hogg, Daniel E. Frye and Carl Wunsch

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Cruise Report- ULTRAMOOR Cruise- Bermuda July 30/31, 2000

Table of Contents

I.               Cruise Narrative
II.            Mooring Diagrams and Lowering Configuration
III.        Mooring Logs
IV.         Data Examples
V.             Photos
VI.          Original Cruise Plan

I.                Cruise Narrative

Cruise Participants- D. Frye (Chief Scientist), N. Hogg, M. Johnson, K. Von der Heydt, W. Ostrom, P. Koski, S. Worrilow, R. Shrawder

Vessel- R/V Weatherbird II- Rob Chadwell (Captain), Lee Black (Marine Supt), John (Mate), Dale, Dave and Mike (Deckhands), Wayne (Cook), and TJ (Engineer)

July 26, 2000- Arrived Bermuda and began mobilization. Briefed Weatherbird crew on the cruise plan. Began prepping capsules, current meters and acoustic modems. Unloaded container.

July 27, 2000- Continued with prep. Loaded mooring gear and wound wire. Set up Data Capsule Magazine (DCM) on ship's deck with receive transducer in the water and installed data capsules. Ran tests until about midnight- then left on test overnight.

Mark and Peter continued to build up modems and battery packs. Scott and Ryan continued to work on current meters.

July 28, 2000- Safety meeting led by Rob. Rob informed the Biostation staff and visitors that swimming within 100 m of the ongoing acoustic tests could be harmful to their hearing and asked that all swimmers avoid the dock area until the tests concluded. Defined the LCT transmit schedule (below) to allow for clock drift and the fact that the FSI (which is integrated to an LCT) takes about 4.5 minutes to transfer data via the acoustic link. This consists of about 2.5 minutes to respond to a data request and about 2 minutes to send the data acoustically. Scott and Ryan loaded current meters and Willy prepped the equipment needed for the acoustic lowering tests. 

LCT(130)- 2 minutes after the hour- this is the LCT at 130m depth

LCT(800)- 3 minutes after the hour- this is the LCT at 800m depth

LCT(3500)- 4 minutes after the hour- this is the UAM at 3500m depth

LCT(4500)- 5 minutes after the hour- this is the UAM at 4500m depth

LCT (FSI)- 6-10.5 minutes after the hour- this is the UAM interfaced to the FSI current meter at 2000 m depth.

Note that this schedule leaves about 4 minutes available to acoustically query the DCM controller. The controller is powered for the first 15 minutes of each hour.

Because we found the controller to be resetting on occasion, we decided to have Peter make a significant change in the controller code to eliminate the use of flash memory for temporary storage of data prior to loading it into the capsules. This change was to upload data to the capsules following each one-hour data collection period. In order to test the new software overnight, we delayed the cruise by one day. This delay gave Mark more time to test the micro-modem versions of the LCT (which had not been tested at WHOI due to time pressure) and to repair and cure two inadequately potted acoustic sources.

July 29, 2000- Verified operation of the DCM and LCTs during an overnight test with the DCM on the deck of the ship and several LCTs in cages in the water. Completed caging of the LCTs. Put DCM over the side and tested the acoustic query function- it worked as designed. Keith verified the Orbcomm to ship telemetry that allows the Orbcommm data to be accessed while at sea.

July 30, 2000- Sailed at midnight. Weather calm, winds under 10 knots. On ULTRAMOOR deployment station at 31 degrees 50.5 minutes N and 64 degrees 01.0 minutes W at 0530 local=0830 GMT. Depth observed to be 4546 m uncorrected. Corrected depth = 4579 m. Began acoustic lowering at 0620. Lowered instruments consisted of 3 acoustic releases, one LCT (UAM(4500)) and the Nortek current meter which was installed 2000 m above the LCT. The LCT transmitted one data packet every minute. Stopped at 500m and determined that the surface receive transducer was not working well. Mark repaired the transducer by implementing the Datasonics preamp. This resulted in a huge increase in transducer output. (Signal level was 3.3 prior to change and 22,000 after change). Continued to 2000 m- installed the Nortek current meter. Continued to 3000m and then to 4000 m where the releases were tested. Installed the DCM over the side (it was flat calm and this entailed no risk) and used it to listen to the LCT on the upcast. Verified that the DCM was receiving data from the LCT from 4000 m up to the surface. Approximate signal strength as a function of depth shown below.

500m- 22,000
700m- 10,700
900m-6000
1535m- 1120
1845m-770
2000m- 2000- note: gain changed at this point
2550m- 1000
3000m- 521- note: Hitec phone w/o baffle had a signal strength of 2.77 and decoded without error.
4000m- 210, Hitec hydrophone signal= 1.0
Signal level using DCM receiver= 120 at 4000 m.
Lowering recovered at 1120 local.
Starting Ultramoor deployment operation at 1230 about 4.5 NM W of deployment site.

Note: Argos ball ID# 5366

Dropped anchor at 1710 local at 31 degrees 50.704 N and 64 degrees 03.037 W. [Note: Discovered discrepancy in the mooring diagram depth and had to install an additional 70m of wire below the UAM (4500). As a result, we were set up for a depth of 4550m, not 4579. We deployed the mooring 2 miles short of the original location to hit the correct depth.] Final mooring location after release was boxed in was 31 50.84 N and 64 03.33 W in 4552 m of water.

Acoustic query of the DCM from the ship at 2012 local. All 4 data packets were recovered from the query. Signal strength was about 10. Data indicated that all 4 data capsules were alive and well and that all 5 LCTs were sending data. Peter and Mark repeated the acoustic query at 2100 with the same results.

Note: The current meters deployed on the Ultramoor prototype mooring were installed as shown below.

July 31, 2000- At the ULTRAMOOR anchor location at 0530 (local) waiting for Capsule #1 to appear- It was programmed to release at 0600 local on 7/31/00. Weather calm, winds under 10 knots. Heard capsule RF beacon at 0618 (note: about 11 minutes to corrode the burn wire and 1-2 minutes to ascend in theory). Keith spotted the capsule at 0650 about 1.25 NM from the site. Capsule recovered at 0705 at 31 50.454 N and 64 04.765 W. Note that about 0.5 knots of surface current (to the West) has been running since we have been out here. First Orbcomm message received at WHOI at 0628. Data look to be good- all systems functioning as planned.

Queried DCM with the acoustics on the ship- verified that Capsule #1 was expended. All other systems ok. Data capsules 2 and 3 scheduled to release on Aug 30 and Sept 30, respectively.

0830-Transitted to Vectran test mooring site and did a brief depth survey. Depth at the site (31 55.00 N and 64 01.00 W) is 4629 m corrected. Mooring diagram was set up for 4450 m so we added 180 m to the bottom of the mooring. Began deployment about 1000 local. Anchor deployed at 1410 at 31 55.00 N and 64 00.71 W in 4629 m of water. Final anchor location after boxing in was 31 55.04 N and 64 00.90 W.

1530- Returning to Bermuda.
2030- At the dock. Most of us slept on board.

August 1, 2000- Unloaded ship. Prepared shipment for airfreight to Boston. 6 pieces going to San Jose and 16 pieces to Boston. Lauren Simons given paperwork by Dan Frye about 1300. Willy, Scott and Ryan unloading mooring gear. Depart Biostation about 1430.

II. Mooring Diagrams and Lowering Configuration

A.        Test instrumentation lowering

B.        Instrument test mooring

C.       Hardware test mooring

III. Mooring Logs

IV. Data Examples

      A.    Orbcomm messages

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: capsule 01 Orbcomm messages

Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 14:25:06 -0400

From: keith von der heydt <kvonderheydt@whoi.edu>

To: starbell@whoi.edu, nhogg@whoi.edu, dfrye@whoi.edu,kpeal@whoi.edu

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Sixty messages were received from cap01 at whoi.edu.
There were 3 duplcates received, 1 of which followed a message with obvious differences

compared to the second attempt.  Of the remainder, 55 were data packets comprising 9680 bytes

from the UAM controller.  The capsule arrived at the sea surface, judging from VHF beacon reception,
at 0918Z. The only message with a bad CRC had obvious errors and is clearly identifiable as a
duplicate of a retransmission that arrived intact. I am trying to figure out if these 3 retransmission
came about as a function of the way the capsule/SC or Orbcomm system.  In any event, all data that was transmitted was received correctly with respect to the capsule/Orbcomm/email systems.

I am speculating that the longer time between receptions after the capsule was recovered and allowed
to transmit on deck is due to the poorer match the transmitter sees in air compared to on the sea

surface and the poorer skyward view on deck.

None of the transmissions appear to have arrived as GlobalGrams, i.e. in the Orbcomm
store-and-forward mode.

I would not assume the rate at which sea surface transmissions arrived (about 1.5min/msg),
is to be expected normally as the sea surface conditions were unusually good and there were
only 21 transmissions before capsule recovery.

TIME is the time GMT 7/31 the message arrived at WHOI

PAGE is the page in CAP01 FLASH0

BLK is the block (of 3), in PAGE

Time    PAGE    BLK

A. FSI data