I’m sitting at my desk, while delightful Niki is out on the water to deploy Will and Otis, Jr. So I figured I should maybe write a blog.

Niki is helping me out (SO MUCH) by going out and being my acoustician on the water – actually deploying the gliders while I am stuck at my computer piloting them. She has the help of the awesome Jim and Doug from the Oregon Coast Aquarium dive team, and their wonderful, fast boat, the Gracie Lynn.

We got up nice and early and got to the lab before first light to load the truck and transport the gliders to the South Beach Marina (such a long drive…not). Here I ran some self-tests on both gliders, connected to them via serial connection. Of course what should have taken 45 mins took 1.5 hours, but that’s science! We loaded everything up and off they headed – straight west about 35 miles off shore, to get the gliders over deep water.

We are conducting a short engineering test before the gliders head to the Gulf of Mexico for their summer field work. Otis Jr is new (to replace our beloved SG608, Otis), and his PAM system needs to be tested. Will got new batteries after his flight  in Catalina last summer, so we want to test that he is all in good working shape too (his weight is slightly different now so gotta check how he flies.)

So why hurry up and wait? Well the last few weeks have been crazy hectic trying to get SG639 set up and tested, with LOTS of issues. We are in a time crunch to get the gliders shipped to Louisiana before the June cruise. So we got them ready for the test flight (rush rush rush) and then we had to wait for a weather window to actually deploy them because, well, weather on the Oregon Coast in April (wait wait wait).

But today we got a window. And fingers crossed we will recover on Sunday (its just a short test).