At the deep well, we decided to pour the concrete pad before Scott D. tried to shorten the fiber. It is little bigger than the others in order to include the short piezometer well. It was drilled this morning by Ali using the hand tube well method, but the short well was finished before we got to the site. They put shortening the fiber off until the afternoon. Don’t know if that was the correct choice, as it started later than planned, took longer than planned and, of course, ended up finishing in the dark. The steel cap was connected to the protective steel tube covering the fibers and epoxied. Scott D. with Scott N. assisting took his time working on boards over still soft concrete to fusion splice the endings of the fibers with the connectors onto the cut ends from the well. The first three times failed. Even worse, one of the 125-micron fibers broke off. The duplicate pair for the well was gone. Now there was no room for mistakes. A short break, readjusting the work bench made of wooden boards and brick and try again. He did it, by the light of flashlights and headlamps before a small knot of people. A small red light was put on one fiber and a light beam came out the other. Down 765 ft to the bottom of the well and back up. The well was good.
The contrast in techniques couldn’t be more apparent. While the Scotts were splicing 125-micron glass fibers with precision instruments, twenty feet away, I was up to my elbows in concrete. For some reason they attracted the bigger crowd, except for 6-year old Omi who asked me to take pictures of a friend and herself while I was covered in cement.