Last night and today were... quite exciting. Lots of power problems related to whatever it was we did trying to get the GSM to work. We're back up to stable power, but it was not fun for a while. Wendy's connected into AC1 instead of AC2 on the inverter like she should be, and she's no longer able to regulate the fill of her internal fuel tank so we're doing it for her. The fix for the inverter is going to involve working on the internal board or replacing it, so I'm not sure if we'll get to that or not. Wendy has also been randomly turning herself off (with plenty of fuel left), so Jan and Anne went out tonight and tightened the connections inside her control box. Hopefully this will fix it. Don was here this morning and switched a couple of wires which allows the heater to run while Wendy's running. This is a very welcome change.

This morning, Jan and Don fixed the holes in the side of the hab (just in time - the weather's starting to look gross) and Anne spray painted warning symbols in bright orange onto the power out for the generator. We realized this was a problem yesterday when I was trying to direct someone totally unfamiliar with the power system to open up Wendy's control box and he started heading for the big box with live wires. After this, Jan, Don, and I replaced the toilet pump after realizing there was no way to fix the old one because the sensor that turned off the pump after the toilet tank was full no longer worked. We had to run new power to it, because the new pump is a 115V, but Jan neatly cable tied our power cable to the rafters (tall people are handy sometimes). Pictures of the installation process have been uploaded to the Engineering WebDAV, as well as pictures of Anne's warning sign and the new patch.

Just before dinner, we [Anne and Jan :P] checked on the new pump and discovered that the toilet supply tank (black half-size tank with yellow lid on top of tank 5) was empty. Further investigation showed that the immersion pump that pumps water from tank 5 to the toilet supply tank wasn't working. Following the wires, we found another loose wire where the black wire supplying 12V to the immersion pump was not properly fastened to its terminator and had come loose. We removed the old terminator and crimped on a new ring terminator of proper gauge. After the new terminator was connected to the 12V panel, the immersion pump started working again and the toilet supply tank started filling up again. We hope this fixed the issue [expletive deleted].

Anne began construction of a pipe for the float switch in the upstairs water tank, although the installation was delayed due to the urgent need to chase balloons. But it's definitely making headway.

I got the last parts of the power meter today, although we haven't installed the sensors yet. That was going to be today, but we wanted to wait for stable power. I still have to find terminals to use for the DC shunts, but after seeing the inside of the breaker box today, I think we'll be able to get a lot of the sensors in there to make my life easier. Also need to get to work on the Musk 12V DC power supply. Was going to pull the cable this afternoon, but the Great Balloon Chase necessitated a nap.

Emily Colvin, XO
MDRS Crew 47