The second week in July I had the opportunity to get some field experience by participating in an experiment in the Potrios Mts west of El Paso near the Mexican border.  We worked with the University of Texas El Paso with Dr. Kate Miller and Dr. Steve Harder.  I learned a lot.  The first day was short because we drove from Socorro to El Paso, stopped and had breakfast at Dr. Steve Harder's home, and arrived in the field by late morning.  Texan's were laid out every ten meters, if I remember correctly.  Texans record continuously during a specified time.  During the survey every time the vibe is triggered the time is recorded by a R134.  Then after the survey, the data recorded on the Texan is cut into sections based on the recorded trigger times.  Also, the geophones and geode (the setup that Dr. Snelson showed us at field camp) was used to see whether we were getting good data.  This was necessary because data recorded by Texans is not accessable in the field.  Luckily the data looked good.  After waking at 4:00 that morning, driving and being out in the field (desert) we were exhausted by the time we got to our motel room. We were not yet aclimated to the desert. 

The second day we got up early to be out in the field before the heat.  We arrived at the site but before we started setting up our equipment we noticed that Cathy's truck (the one pulling the vibe) was losing a lot of antifreeze.  Oh, and here I'll mention that my husband also came with to help on this particular experiment.  He happens to be a mechanic.  So, he diagnosed that the coolant reservoir was cracked.  Luckily, he is very familiar with that type of truck.  It took a couple hours for him and a couple others to drive one of the UTEP vehicles into El Paso and buy a new reservoir, but once the part was out to the site, he fixed it in about 20 minutes.  While the truck was being delt with, everyone else worked on getting the texans put out, and the equipment set out.  After all that trouble though, the data that was collected all afternoon was unuseable because the R134 didn't have the times at the end of the day.  Either it didn't record correctly or it was shut down improperly.  Frustrating!  The graduate students responsible for using that were upset.  

The third day we spent on the UTEP campus very close to the interstate to do a noise test using the geophones and the geode.  It was a long day in the sun too, but by the third day we were getting used to the heat.  I also learned how to use the geode and be the observer for texan survey since Sandra who had been being the observer was leaving.  

The fourth day the survey was pretty much left up to a new grad student, my husband, a student intern from IRIS and myself.  Scary.  We got up extra early (we met to leave the motel at 4:00am) to beat the UTEP people to the site and set up out equipment.  Needless to say, we were nervous after the disaster on tuesday.  We set everything up, helped the UTEP crew put out texans, then everyone left except Dr. Kate Miller.  And we spent the rest of the day vibing down the line. By the time the 5 of us picked up all of the texans and packed up all of our equipment we were tired and incredibly nervous about the data.  Luckily, though, the data was good!

The fifth and last day, went just like the the fourth, except that we had all of our luggage in the field because we were driving back 3.5 hours to Socorro as soon as we finished.  It was like playing tetris to fit all the equipment and luggage in the truck. 

I learned a lot about the logistics of how geophysical surveys are run.  They also let me be the observer for the last two days of the survey.  Not to mention we got to see across the Mexican border from El Paso and some very interesting plants and animals (mostly lizards) in the desert.  Not to mention the sunrises were spectacular.