GPS pole redrilling

Today we redrilled all the poles for the GPS units. They have melted out 50-100 cm since we installed them a little over a week ago. That's rather impressive!

Unfortunately three of the six units were off when we arrived. The solar panels are not providing enough power to keep the units running. I ended up bypassing all the load disconnects on the solar controllers, so at least the power will disconnect at a lower voltage (11V rather than 12V) now, but it looks like we might need to replace some of the batteries so that we get data for the next week.

The GPS base station set up on Teichelmanns Rock had by far the lowest voltage when I checked. Tomorrow we will add an additional solar panel to see if that will help the battery recharge a bit.

GPS set up. The white saucer is the antenna, which is connected to the GPS unit in the orange box. The battery, solar controller, and other wires are also in the box.