On the Top of the World

The last two days, not surprisingly, have been extremely busy. We've been putting in 12 hour days trying to get all of the necessary sites installed while working in 90 degree heat and dew points in the mid 70's. Yesterday consisted of installing and outfitting a 10 meter (30 feet) tower with the necessary instruments (wind speed, direction, temperature, radiation intensity, temperature). Pictures are included below.










Meanwhile, a friendly little creature decided to stop by and say hi. We eventually found his home, and stayed away. We later asked a local what kind of snake it was and he told us it was a coachwhip, which is not poisonous.






After installing this tower, we went to go talk to a few of the US Forest Service people to ask about our next installation at one of the local fire towers. This leads us to today.


Fire towers were originally built prior to WWII as a means of spotting wild fires in the distance. Today, however, with our current population spraw and constant connection via cell phones, they really are no longer needed. The particular fire tower that we climbed today was approximately 100 feet tall and was built sometime around 1930. The tower was pretty much original, except for new wooden stairways. We installed the same equipment at this site as we had at previous sites.



Working on the fire tower was actually much more difficult than installing our own tower because of the small space and the need to actually hang from the 100 foot tower. Let's just say I let the other guys do all the hanging...I just stood on the stairs and watched, that was good enough for me!

Today was another 11 hour day pretty much considering we left for the site at 7:00 am and didn't get back home until 6:00 pm. I also have a pretty nice sunburn on my arms and neck now from working in the hot southern sun for hours on end.

Too tired to write anything more, but enjoy the video of our fire tower climb!