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Sutherland GPS station upgrade: 11 June 2008

Translations: French

Participants
Ludwig Combrinck
Roelf Botha
 
 
A total system upgrade of the Sutherland GPS reference station was done on 11 June 2008. Equipment replaced included:
  1. A new rack-mount type PC system with Fedora Linux
  2. A new Trimble receiver
  3. A new UPS to properly interface with the PC
  4. A network switch to replace the broken unit   

 
The new GPS system at Sutherland.
 
 
Weather at the time was extremely cold, with a cold front hitting South-Africa full force. We had gale-force winds and rain for the whole region, and snow in some nearby regions.
 
Due to the cold front moving through, we had snow on the Matroos Mountains, as well as some very interesting cloud formations, on our way back to Cape Town.
 
After some initial problems with network settings as well as access to the PC through the SAAO Sutherland firewall, we received confirmation of data output from the new station on 26 June. Garith Dugmore of the SAAO technical support team did a great job in assisting us with this issue and helping to resolve it- thanks Garith!