Frustrating day with the GSSI today. Started my workers in WSAC3 in the morning excavating a new locus along the NE baulk to expose more of the stones of the linear feature, which I designated as Locus 8. They did one shovel pass in this and cleaned the surface while I set up the GPR units with Lori. Around 11 I set up a new locus, 9, in the area delimited by several of these rocks in the center of the operation and the NW wall. The soil here is still a darker, looser matrix than the clay-y cultural fill.
However because of the heat and my absence from the trench I decided to split up my eight workers between Ian, Conner and Jake so that I could focus on the GSSI after lunch. I set up a first unit as Grid 002 and tried to get the wheel to calibrate but had a lot of trouble. Specifically, the wheel was not recording any new calibration after I switched to distance mode, which means that it would not know how far I walked for each transect. After calling Jeff I noticed that it not only was not recording a new caibration but was not showing the saved wheel calibration of 1302.250, and that when I tried to go into the run/survey mode and walk, there were no readings. I also spent a lot of tries switching between AUTO and MANUAL for the gain, and this got me even more confused as it started giving strange parameters that I did not recognize. I sent Aparani Artur and Ardzrun to get tape based on Jeff's suggestion for the wires coming out of the wheel, but this didn't seem to have any effect. At the end of the day, I tried going back to the original time-based survey with 0 gain that I had done a few transects in a couple weeks ago and got stuck there too, so Lori and I decided to pack everything up and either come back tomorrow (Sunday) or Monday. It is unfortunate that I lost a half a day of work, but I am eager to get these units done.