Station Service Procedure
Although EPIC station installations can vary according to the type of equipment being used, servicing is relatively straightforward and similar between station designs and equipment.
Station servicing has 3 main goals:
• To retrieve waveform data recorded by the station since the previous service;
• To identify and rectify any problems with equipment or damage to the station;
• To refresh consumable items such as compact flash (CF) cards, batteries, etc.
A simple station with easy vehicular access should take around 20 man-minutes to service.
EPIC provides the service teams with “Service Sheets”. These Service Sheets represent a series of tasks that must be completed in the order presented, together with fields that require information to be entered. The Service Sheets thus represent not only a complete record of the equipment that exist at a particular station, but also a final check of its performance and sanity check for ensuring that the station is operating normally before departing the site. Any equipment that is replaced is recorded on the Service Sheet.
These sheets should be treated as permanent records, though it is likely that they will not survive long past a rain shower. It is therefore imperative that the information recorded be transferred to a more permanent record such as a computer or transferred neatly to a clean Installation Sheet. Neat handwriting is clearly an advantage.
Examples of Service Sheets for stand-alone stations can be found here.
Please have EPIC review the Service Sheets (and Install Sheets) you plan on using for your experiment, even if you downloaded them from the EPIC website. We tailor the Sheets to your experiment, specifically the equipment you've borrowed. Plus datalogger firmware changes, newly discovered bugs, etc. necessitate revisions to these Sheets. Thank you.
Tasks to be completed during a service run:
A) At Station Site
• Upon arrival, observe, clean and repair any damage to equipment and the site;
• Check cables and exposed connectors for damage or water ingress, repair/replace as necessary;
• Retrieve Data: Open the station vault, and complete the tasks listed on the Service Sheet;
• Note any water ingress, and construct water drains to mitigate any future ingress;
• Close the station vault and conduct a final review of the site for left items, garbage or damage.
A) At Station Site
• Upon arrival, observe, clean and repair any damage to equipment and the site;
• Check cables and exposed connectors for damage or water ingress, repair/replace as necessary;
• Retrieve Data: Open the station vault, and complete the tasks listed on the Service Sheet;
• Note any water ingress, and construct water drains to mitigate any future ingress;
• Close the station vault and conduct a final review of the site for left items, garbage or damage.
• Download at least some data on site and review, especially for timing and waveform quality
B) At motel or field headquarters
• Download ALL data to laptop;
• Create at least 2 Backups of ALL data (usually on external disk drives);
• Review State of Health channels and logs and seismic data;
• Create at least 2 Backups of ALL data (usually on external disk drives);
• Review State of Health channels and logs and seismic data;
• If you have questions, please ask. Ask your field partner, call or email EPIC, your colleagues, the manufacturers. If you see potential problems, you may be able to fix them before you leave the field area.
Review State of Health and some recent digital data, e.g. pictured below, where a PQL II 'Split' screen shows time series and spectra of ambient long-period noise from an STS-2. Note the microseism energy in the spectra (0.1 - 0.5Hz) and the higher levels of horizontal(LHE and LHN) long-period noise (~0.001 - 0.03Hz) relative to vertical (LHZ).
