Now ready for Winter Winds at Orcasound Lab?

November 1, 2023

Here it is, the end of October and winter winds will surely be coming. Here is PredictWind’s forecast for the coming weekend. The hydrophone at Orcasound Lab is not very well protected. So, a group of friends, called the B-Team, (don’t ask) gathered on Halloween’s eve to take out the existing hydrophone and put in two others with very secure protection against surely coming winter’s waves.

Earlier I had built a 30 dB gain preamp and connected it to an ITC-4066 hydrophone and then waterproofed the preamp and its connection to the hydrophone and a long FSS-2 5 conductor heavy duty cable.

This cable is then pulled into a 100 foot long 3″ PVC irregation pipe. In addition we pulled a cable for a Cetacean Research Technology un-preamplified hydrophone, a CR-1.

Here is the situation prior to pulling the protecting PVC pipe into the water. Note how the distal end of the pipe will be attached to a concrete filled bucket to eliminate, we hope, thrashing of the end of the cable when strong waves are crashing around nearby.

Here is a gallery of photos taken by our B-Team photographer, Sandy.

Here is the B-Team with Leslie providing needed warming cider and fresh pumpkin bread to our B-Team featuring, David, Barbara, Skye (the youngest member of the team), Tom and Sam with Val and Sandy out of the frame somewhere.