Scripps News, October 2001 	

FLIP: We're flipped up & moored at 18 N, 160 E, about 400 km west 
of the Big Island of Hawaii. FLIP is taking part in the Farfield 
Program of the Hawaii Ocean Mixing Experiment (HOME). Our objective 
is to quantify the energy being radiated away from the Hawaiian 
Ridge in the internal tide. From TOPEX, we now have good estimates 
of the energy being lost from the surface tide at the Ridge. The 
difference in these values is the energy that did not radiate 
away. It is presumably available to drive mixing processes at 
the Ridge. Pete Worcester, the leader of the Farfield phase of 
HOME, has just deployed a four mooring tomography array south 
of the Ridge.Our station is near the array center. We're profiling 
with CTDs and micro conductivity from the surface to 750m at 4 
minute intervals.Our new Deep-8 Doppler Sonar is measuring velocity & 
acoustic scattering strength over the same depth range with 4m depth 
resolution, 30 s time resolution. The big initial surprise is the 
strength of the first harmonic of the semi-diurnal internal tide. On 
Saturday (Oct 6), a six hour period wave group passed by that had 
far greater amplitude than the 12 hour fundamental. On the 7th, the 
semi-diurnal fundamental had a "sawtooth" waveform, again a symptom 
of an energetic harmonic structure. We look forward to the coming 
spring tide to see the full range of phenomena at this site. Thanks 
to George Trekas & the MPL shop for help in building our instruments, 
to Tom Golfinos & the FLIP crew for getting the experiment up & 
running. Frank Biegler & Norm Waters made the deployment of our 
thirty thousand foot anchor line look "easy". Special appreciation to 
Bill Gaines for keeping our operation going, logistically, in spite 
of the chaos of recent world events. (Rob Pinkel, MPL)