Shore Station Activities

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Much of the action during the OOI RSN primary node installation work has been taking place at sea on the TE SubCom Dependable. Since the work began in early July, however, OOI RSN team members, including representatives from OOI RSN prime contractor L-3 MariPro, have been staffing the shore station in Pacific City, Oregon, 24/7. The shore station is where the submarine system connects to the terrestrial grid and network for power and data connectivity, and plays a crucial role in powering the system up and down during cable and node testing and deployment. Dennis Manning, OOI RSN Shore Station Manager, reports on recent activities:

Things here at the station are intermittently calm now although they moved quickly during the installation of the Primary Nodes along the southern line of the OOI RSN cabled infrastructure. Now, in this phase of node installation on the northern line, the greater depths of node locations means deployment is a longer process because of the travel times between the ship and the seafloor. The L-3 MariPro folks have been diligently pouring over data while the ship transits and grapnels for cable segment ends. They have twice found an opportunity to test the nodes already installed on the southern line during a short window of time offered by the ship to power up this line. At the ship's request, we have kept the southern line powered down while installation work is going on along the northern cable route. As I write this, we are waiting for our call from the ship to begin the power up for the onboard testing of Primary Node 3A.

--Dennis Manning, OOI RSN Shore Station Manager, Pacific City, Oregon