Palau - field work

We are finally to that part of the trip I loved, the field work. I love field work! There is nothing about working outside until you feel like you are going to fall over from exhaustion. Our station is located on the largest island in Palau, it is named Babelthaup. I have heard it pronounced "bobble-dop" and yes, it made be giggle every time. Welcome to our site! The first element we went to is home to a Japanese fox hole. According to my boss, when the site was first installed it was swept for unexploded ordnance. I was still cautious when taking the following photos.

It may be a little hard to tell in this photo, but there are two entrances to the fox hole. The fox hole is in a "U" shape.

This is the closest entrance to the path...

and this is the entrance farthest from the path.

This is a photo of one of the sites. What you can see here is the "rosette" wind filter design. There are four of these rosettes for each element, and the signal is summed from all four, before it is recorded. This is the same set-up at our Indian Ocean site, but we have a different set up at the Hawaii station.

This is a carnivorous plant. I found this one growing near the solar panels. I have never, ever, EVER seen one of these growing in the wild. My travel mates were not phased by these cuties, but I was VERY excited!

I had to take a photo of the foliage. I remember when I was young, sitting in the Zoo-day-camp, I remember the unit on the tropical rain-forest. I remember thinking "Wow I will never go somewhere that cool!", here I am! It still gets me.

I call this one: getting shit done with what you have. This is the "post" for the GPS for one of the sites. Nothing like fixing the site with what you have.

Here is one last shot of a rosette.

Now that you have had a tour of the site, I have a story. I am going to have to back way up. Back when I started at the lab, before I had even been working a month, the senior engineer came to Palau to hook up our new generator. While he was there (in the rain I am sure he would like me to add), he was swarmed by bees who blew up one of the electrical components at one of the sites. Our poor Palau site then suffered through a power outage. Apparently according to word of mouth, the generator for the island (and country) caught fire because someone was out fishing. Palauans LOVE to go fishing. So, the generator caught fire and suddenly there is no power to the country or our station. I think that was in November. Our station was down for at least 3 months. Finally in February, the proper transformer was delivered to the community college, power came back on and so did the station. Our fearless engineer was there to turn the station back on. He said at that time, the bees had totally taken over that one element. There was honey in the vault. Now we come to my trip. One of our meetings was with our subcontractor who visits the site on a regular basis. We had asked them to "Take care of the bees" which they said they had done. Well, turns out the bees did not want to be evicted from their lovely home in our vault. They were STILL THERE! We attacked them with bleach water, but they still came back! We ended up having to pull all the electronics from that vault and just leave the element to the bees, for now...

EVIL bees!

Now due to the power outage, the AC in our data center had been off for months. Not only was it hot in there, but moist, and everything was starting to mold. While we were there (and out in the field at that) the new AC showed up! I was so happy to open the door to cool air, that I took a photo of the working AC unit.

Field work done, (check list I made gone through), we headed back south to town. On the way back the previous day, I had spotted a large pyramid. This time, I had the guys pull over so I could check it out. It turned out to be a WWII memorial (that was in need of some TLC).

There was a bench in front, with steps, and you can't see it (because it is over grown) but lines coming away towards me. It could be very nice if someone kept the grass down.

The inscription was in English and Japanese and says,
"Rest in peace!
For the souls of US and Japanese soldiers who lost their lives during the World War II in the southern islands in the West Pacific Ocean and also for the souls of Palau peoples involved in the war we say our prayers from the bottom of our heart

With out strong tenacity for the calm period of fifty years after the war and eternal peace we devote ourselves to repose of the souls
1995 Tokufukai " That is all for this post on the field work. Next time, our awesome dinner, and trying to get home!