Lightning storm

As a result of the lightning strikes in March 2007 FIES suffered several failures including on the network connection, the new temperature monitoring system, two power supplies failed and the encoders for the internal calibration lamps and the focus mechanism give incorrect readings. The two problems with the encoders are still been investigated.

One thing that became clear was that there is not a full set of spares and that in many cases we do not have sufficient documentation (in many cases only in Danish) to do a proper trouble shooting of the instrument. Together with Aarhus we plan to make a proper inventory to determine which spares we need and a proper set of documentation should be defined.

The lightning protection of the FIES building should be reviewed in detail, but likely we will need to make an artificial grounding close to the building.