this is for this glider only

ru23 returned with sb 0055 from Gulf of Mexico oil operations. The puck bbfl2-338 is scratched on the chlor channel (has been for awhile) and was covered with barnacles but chlor seemingly the channel that was ‘operationally covered’.

Science Payload:

CTD-0055
bbfl2-338 (scratched)

LIION Rechargeable batteries

Recovered by Gary Kirkpatrick et.al. Port wing was missing upon recovery and 9 remoras of various sizes were witnessed attached to the glider.

Glider flew one segment last night. So pretty confused what\'s going on with this thing. Wonder if air bladder could be malfunctioning?

Attempting to fly overnight, maybe slightly safer than drifting and \'hey you never know\'.

Still need to pull MBD data from last overdepth abort mission.

Glider still not diving, not a good glider day...

Trying 2 hour missions. Roll record is horrible, definitely something wrong with the vehicle.

Glider did not go under water the last segment. No idea why, MLG pulled but looks normal with some fin out of deadband oddities.

Putting back on short dive longer missions for the night.

All,

Update from today\'s tests:

1. spinning uncontrollably at times to the left, port, counterclockwise; characteristic of port wing loss?
2. roll went from ~ -5 degrees average to during dives, + 5 degrees, and climbs +12.5 degrees; characteristic of wing loss on the port side of the vehicle
3. pitch looks OK
4. comparing vertical velocity of dives right now to a week ago: without doing too much work into pitch angles etc, I do see we went from .12 cm / s to .06 cm/s

UPDATE:
Just received another segment worth of data, it appears we tracked heading a little better for 1/2 the segment, and then the other half began the spins.

So while it looks like we lost a wing, could a remora be in there affecting things as well, or is it all just biology.

At some point tonight I will tailor the sbd to watch us fly with lighter science. Otherwise, where is a good spot to point a limping glider nose?

Keep in mind we have to consider it a wing loss until it goes away in which case it was probably a remora, innocent until proven guilty.

Attached are some of the plots I was looking at.

yo10.ma got corrupt, if file transfers do not go through, this is the first culprit.

Get a fresh copy and remake the file.

Diving to 45 meters for 1.5 hours. Lets see how she does, also re-zeroed pressure sensor just to be safe.

Gary noticed no progress.

Glider appears to be just sitting there getting GPS hits for 3 hours. No dive record.

Put on 1 hour missions, it dove, sloppily at that.

Going to retask to the east until we can come up with recovery slot.

Turning optics on ONLY downcast. CTD on dives and climbs.

Battery is getting low, so we\'ll need time, increasing speed by cutting off the bottom water column that we can\'t swim in, this should speed it up and help us troubleshoot what is going on with this vehicle.

Density bouncing down deep, high density layer.

GPS abort, sending back down

Switched no comms (surfac40) to 4 hours, surfac20 was set to 3 hour segments.

deployed by alan hails and David Aragon on Shore Support