[time-nuts] St Veran gravity red-shift misson

[Magnus Danielson]

Fellow time-nuts,

So, 5 years ago I was asked by Observatoir Royal de Belgique to take 
care of two failed 5071A cesiums and alter them so that there is one 
functioning. I did that, and have operated the functioning one here and 
there, but conservatively, since they wanted to do a mission with 
graviational red-shift.

Since them, other things happen in life, such as Covid, prohibiting 
work. However, a few weeks ago I was contacted as they where about to go 
on the mission. I thought it would be nice to join, as I had quite a bit 
of the things needed for such mission.

Setting it up meeds a number of challenges, as it needs to be powered 
continuously, and over a varity of sources.

In addition I wanted to log as much data as possible. I've come far on 
that point. I log 5071A state and several other environment sensors into 
an InfluxDB and then illustrate with Grafana. Independently two GNSS 
receivers log things for post-processing.

Just assembling the rig for the two 100 W PV panels and a choke-ring 
antenna has been a challenge. Let's just say that I should not be hired 
to do fine mechanics work.

Things have been fixed during the travel, and I have driven 600+1100+800 
km just to be in base-camp before final climb. I'm now sitting in a 
borrowed house just outside of Grenoble. I just had to tear out part of 
the equipment, as one of the power converters failed. Luckily that side 
was redundant for the mission, but I do miss one pressure sensor to 
compare the small one with.

I had intended for my passive hydrogen maser to also do the trip, but it 
woke up with an unexpected problem and did not lock, and I decided it 
was not meaningful to bring it's dead weight along. I will have to 
investigate the actual fault. Also, I have been unable to log the 
internal state, which Would have given valuable clues.

Tomorrow we do the final climb to Observatoir de St Veran at 2930 m and 
stay there for 8 days.

Connectivity can be sketchy.

In the end of the day, it is only if you try that you can either fail or 
succeed. So far, it has not yet failed completely catastrofically, but 
warnings-signs has gone of and they been managed, so far. This can still 
fail spectacular.

Now I badly need my bed. Being sleep deprived does not help thinking.

Cheers,
Magnus