Above: James Brundell and Xinhu Feng with solar panels.
In 2024-25, Johnny Malone-Leigh has made a number of trips to different MANA sites to work on the MANA network magnetometers.
Over two field trips in November and December 2024, he was joined by James Brundell, PhD student Xinhu Feng, and summer student James Elford, in travelling to the Space Ops centre at Awarua, near Invercargill. During these trips the team installed a new magnetometer at a new site determined to have less interference than the prior magnetometer location, which was being affected by a lot of noise. The second trip was necessary to replace a damaged cable and retrieve the old magnetometer.
In late February to early March 2025, Johnny travelled to Oakview to perform some maintenance on the magnetometer there – dealing with a water breach and replacing the cable. This helped to reduce transient noise in the magnetometer.
In October 2025, as reported in a previous blog post, Johnny travelled to the Chatham Islands and removed the magnetometer there. This month, Johnny and James travelled much closer to home, to our installation at Swampy Summit, to help install new off-grid solar power.
Now it’s time for the Solar Tsunamis team to head off for a well-earned Christmas break, and we’ll be back in 2026!
