One of the best and worst things about being here at the MDRS is that just when you think you've got things sorted out, new things jump up to fill your focus. Hence it was today that we had yet another day filled with challenges.

Yesterday, we had to turn the generator off at around 2300 because we did not have enough fuel for the night to see us through to the next refuelling at 0700. So after a quick candlelight conversation, we all went to bed. Richard and Susmita awoke early this morning to start the generator up again. We now have to resort to kickstarting the backup generator (Lil Genny) by driving one of the ATVs over and connecting up the battery. On trying this several times this morning, Richard was unable to get the generator started and had to abandon further attempts for fear of draining the ATV battery so much that he wouldn't be able to get it started.

After waking up and completing my morning routine, Jamon and I went out to the generator to take a look. We have had a number of issues that we have overcome with these generators, but both were looking pretty sick. Both electric starters were gone, the starter motor in the backup generator was below the required level to start it and the hand crank on the main generator was non-operational. We decided to troubleshoot the main generator as it was fully fueled. The hand crank was the issue so that's where we started. Jamon took off the hand crank casing and opened the coil housing. The spring that causes the rope for the hand crank to retract after being pulled sprung outwards everywhere like a faulty watch in a cartoon. This was going to be problematic getting it back together, I thought. As Jamon held the casing, I wound the spring back around and after a while, it was all wound up. Thinking we'd done a pretty good job Jamon went to try and put the front cover on it when the spring unravelled and we were back to where we started again. Fortunately, at about that time, our local Mission Support, Don Foutz turned up with our extra fuel. He gave us a hand in putting the hand crank back on with the spring tightly wound. After weaving a bit more of his magic, he was able to get the China Special started and we had full power once again.

After our morning incident, I gave the morning brief and we decided on our EVAs for the day. Susmita, Heather and Jamon were to go out on a morning EVA with the truck and in the afternoon, Richard and Edwin would take the ATVs out to the repeater station and also continue with the filming of Edwin's video for his European colleagues.

In the morning EVA, Heather, Susmita and Jamon were fortunate to find a large number of items such as some petrified wood, a large variety of rocks and possibly a fossilized dinosaur bone, which they took images of but did not remove. Further detail on this EVA can be seen in the EVA reports.

During the morning session, I took the opportunity to continue to develop my novice carpentry skills. There was a need for a new shelf to be put up on which to place all of the hab's DVDs and videos. From a couple of bits of scrap wood I found lying around the hab and a jigsaw, I cobbled together a new shelf. This is probably not one that would make it into a home handyman's manual but I reminded myself that functionality had to come first and aestheitcs, second.

Soon after the first EVA returned at around 1530, there was a large bang heard upstairs in the crew quarters. Richard saw a large arcing of around 2 or three inches going from one of the cables that lead up to the roof to a metal girder. The cables lead to the roof of the hab to where a small weather station was. We quickly shut down the power thinking that this would remove the arcing, however it remained after it was stopped. After inspecting the cabling, Richard found that there was no connection to the hab's power and therefore the arcing would not be affected by the presence or not of hab power. We turned it back on. At the same time that the arcing occurred, there was a large storm overhead and all around the hab. One possibility is that the hab suffered a minor strike or that the normal rate of discharge of the weather station was somehow impeded during the storm and that it built up a large charge before arcing or discharging a large amount of energy. We would like to try and ground the station but don't want to venture out onto the roof due to the dangers involved. As the cables where the arcing is occurring reside in the roof, there is no immediate threat and this will give us time to confer with Mission Support on a possible solution.

Richard and Edwin were keen to get on their way for their EVA, having been cancelled yesterday due to the storm. They were on their way at just before 1600. During this time, the rest of the crew took the opporunity to start writing up reports or taking care of personal projects. I continued working on my solar power design for the hand held radios as well as completing some of the psychological tests and my afternoon journal entry.

As we had a lot to get through today we didn't actually sit down for dinner until around 2200 and by the time we were all cleaned up for the evening it was midnight. Thus ended quite a long day for the crew on their third out of five days in full simulation.