STARE event log

2004

Approximately from March 8, 2004 to December 2, 2004, the FIN radar had an accumulative timing error, which probably increased nearly linearly from March, reaching 3 hours 41 minutes 48 seconds at 07:31:10 UT December 2, 2004 when it was corrected. This means that NO DATA BETWEEN MARCH 8, 2004 AND DECEMBER 2, 2004 SHOULD BE USED UNLESS SOME MEASURES ARE TAKEN TO CORRECT THE FINLAND TIMING ERROR.

2003

Jan 3, Both radars basically work now.

2002

6 Feb. FIN radar fixed. Both radars are operating now. A time error of about 2 min exists in FIN until 20020207 14:00 UT. The clock of the Linux-PC in Hankasalmi was 2 min behind but was fixed at 20020207 13:50 UT. From now on it should remain in time.
16 May, about 14:30 UT. Weak signal noticed in part of FIN beams. Beams 3 and 5 swapped for testing purposes. I.e., FIN data from now on incorrect in that regard.
21 May, about 8:50 UT. Beams 3 and 5 swapped back to original position. I.e., FIN data correct again in this regard.
20 Dec. FIN transmitter probably failed 02 UT.

2001

1 Jan. FIN transmitter off because of transformer brekdown. FIN data 1 Jan - 23 March contains just noise.
23 March, 10 UT. FIN transmitter working again. Both radars working.
30 May. NOR transmitter down.

2000

20 Jan. FIN beams 6,7 have no valid data. Visible as a gap in vector and SNR plots. The problem is somewhere in the container.
31 Jan. FIN: Beams 6,7 work again. The data seems to have still some too-high sidelobe problems.
12 Feb. FIN: Omega band event 20000212 02:37 (with MUO camera) shows reasonable E-field vectors, even though a sidelobe problem still persists if one looks at the SNR. Thus one can use the Finnish data since 31 Jan for geophysical studies, but keep in mind a possibility for degraded accuracy.
1. Apr. NOR: radar off due to comm-PC problems. It remains off except that for 4th of April we have data from 00:00-04:30. This period also contains a lot of activity.
14. Apr. NOR back in operation. The Web pages are not yet updated automatically for NOR data, but the data exists.
11. May. Several powerdowns due to storm wind in Hankasalmi.
25 May. NOR web pages update works again.
11 June. FIN transmitter tube failed sometime at 10 UT. Simultaneous power failures due to storms.
17 June. FIN transmitter tube replaced. Valid data beginning 20 UT.
26 June. FIN receiver problem. No valid FIN data until August 10.
10 August. FIN reiceiver problem corrected, except that channel 5 is still down.
12 August. NOR radar down.
24 August. NOR up again.
29 August. FIN Channel-5 fixed, FIN now fully working.
30 August. NOR down due to failed SCSI controller in comm-PC.
7 September. NOR up. Both radars now up.
22-28 September. Peter Chapman servicing Hankasalmi. No interruption in data flow, but some test passages occur:
- 24/09/00 08:05 UT - 16:25 UT
- 25/09/00 07:33 UT - 14:05 UT
- 26/09/00 07:20 UT - 17:30 UT
- 27/09/00 08:45 UT - 08:50 UT
22 September. FIN known problem: Sharp power fluctuations occur sometimes during daytime, visible as vertical lines of higher signal in RTI plots. Also power sometimes seems to fade away, in order to reappear soon. Velocity vectors seem partly corrupted during these times, so avoid using them.
8 November. FIN transmitter failure (high-voltage transformer broke down).
29 November. FIN transmitter fixed (transformer replaced). Both radars working again.

1999

11 Feb. NOR comm-PC clock problem, Implication: First hour (00:00-00:59) belongs to the end of the day, actually. So, currently, do not trust NOR 00-01 data from 11 Feb until 10 March. If strongly needed, this could probably be fixed afterwards.
1 March. At about 18:46, offset of 17 seconds in Hankasalmi clock. Should be correct after this. Before, the last correct was 24 Feb. Clock probably drifted due to salama.fmi.fi GPS breakdown.
4 March. Comm-PC hang on Hankasalmi. Rebooted.
10 March. Norway seems to have clock problem during this day even after fixings (see below).
31 March. NOR clock problem fixed on analyzed files and RTI plots for 12 Feb - 31 March. From Apr 1, NOR files are still incorrect. The raw data files are probably partly correct, partly incorrect during this time, so one has to beware. (However, the headers contain the time information so this should not be too serious a problem.)
30 May. FIN down for some time because of electric power problems (storm in middle Finland).
30 June. FIN down for some time because of thunderstorm. Noticed that the sttime,entime variables of Feb-12..Mar-31 analyzed files were NOT fixed by the NOR fix script, which is why the RTI plots also show a 1 h time shift. Fixed these files retrospectively, and RTI plots. Also fixed everything up to 31 May. Thus, everything up to 31 May is now Norway-fixed. Only the first hour of first day of each month is still wrong in NOR.
Oct 22 - Nov 2. Maintenance work with NOR.
Nov 2 - 21. Some faulty yagis in NOR, causing a depression in SNR at about range gate 18. This was fixed 21 Nov.
Nov 23 forward. Transmission problems (random packet loss) between Hankasalmi and Helsinki. Data is delayed some days, but not lost.
Nov 29. Some downtime at FIN because a storm caused power to go down.
Dec 1. Again some downtime at FIN because of a storm.
Dec 5-6. NOR down because of network connection failure between Radar-PC and communication-PC.

1998

February 3. FIN out of operation. (NOR is in operation.)
February 23. NOR out of operation. (Both radars out of operation.)
March 17. NOR back in operation. (FIN is still out.)
March 23. NOR channel 7 dies.
March 23. Henry Perplies, Pekka Riihelä and Pekka Janhunen go to Hankasalmi. FIN back in operation, but data will contain test periods. Both radars in operation.
March 27. Pekka Janhunen returns from Hankasalmi, PR and HP still remain. FIN data will contain test periods.
March 31. NOR channel 7 back to life again (by itself). Both radars in operation (but FIN may contain test periods).
April 9 (approx.). Henry and Pekka R back from Hankasalmi, no test data any more.
April 13. NOR out of operation. (FIN is in operation.)
April 18. NOR back in operation. (Both radars operate.)
April 25. NOR out of operation. (FIN is in operation.)
April 29. NOR back in operation (Both radars operate.)
June 10. NOR out of operation. (FIN is in operation.)
June 16. Henry Perplies, Pekka Riihelä and Peter Chapman go to Hankasalmi. Data will contain test periods. Both radars operate.
June 17. Discovered that beams (channels) 3 and 6 were swapped with each other. Made correction to stare.t to swap these beams before plotting data older than Jun 17 1998.
June 18. NOR back in operation. (Both radars operate but FIN has test periods.)
15 July. FIN transmitter off. NOR is working.
4 August. NOR radar off. Both are off.
5 August. NOR running again. FIN still off.
12 August. FIN radar on again. Both are working now.
23 August. Burnt fuselage in power supply, Hankasalmi transmitter off.
24 August. Hankasalmi on again.
24 August. Noticed that Hankasalmi clock is 222 seconds behind. Clock set manually now, looking for a better solution.
9 September. Norway off. Hankasalmi is working.
14 September. Norway back on. Both radars are working now.
24 September. Hankasalmi down at noon. Norway is working.
26 September. Hankasalmi back on at 20:40. Both radars are working now.
28 September. Henry is doing some operations in Norway. Radar occassionally off, or in test mode.
29 November. Hankasalmi transmitter off in the afternoon.
3 December. Hankasalmi transmitter fixed by Pekka R at 10 UT. Both radars working again.

Pekka Janhunen (First.Last@fmi.fi)