System Operations, Maintenance, and Troubleshooting
Domain focus
This domain tests keeping a PORTS station running: preventive maintenance, troubleshooting, documentation, and service restoration.
Core rules
- Preventive maintenance follows a schedule: inspect mounts and cables, clean and antifoul sensors, check desiccant and seals, verify battery and solar charging, download logs, and calibrate or replace sensors.
- Troubleshooting is layered: power → logger → sensor → telemetry → data center. Confirm each layer with diagnostics before replacing hardware.
- Change control: record serial numbers, firmware, calibration coefficients, and site photos. Undocumented changes destroy traceability.
- Spares and response times are part of system design; a station with no spare sensor has a longer mean time to repair.
- Biofouling, corrosion, lightning, and fishing or vessel damage are common failure modes in ports.
Worked example
A station stops reporting. The technician checks the last GOES transmission, then battery voltage (11.8 V, low), solar charge current (near zero), and finds a failed charge controller. Replacing the sensor would not help. The root cause is power; the fix is the controller plus a battery health check and a maintenance note.
Traps
Replacing a sensor before checking power and telemetry; skipping calibration records; using non-marine connectors; failing to update metadata after a site change; leaving a station in test mode in production.