Both balloons were deflated enough that there was several inches of air between it and the chamber gas-plane for the bottom-most 10--12" of the front and back chamber. A camera has been installed so we can monitor the balloon status from the counting house (see other entry).
The flangle gas flow is a little confusing. We tried putting an outflow
bubbler on the system to see if any helium was actually being vented
through the "vent" line. The answer is no. We had to crank the inflow
pressure way up (several inches of water at least -- it was off-scale the
available meters) to get even a slow bubble rate in the outflow bubbler.
That tells us that helium is going in and leaking out somewhere...
After trying a few things without success we removed the outflow bubbler
and returned the gas configuration to its original state. The inflow was
set to roughly 1 cfm and we're assuming/hoping that that will keep the
flangle volume full of helium. (The volume can only be roughly a cubic
foot so it's hard to imagine 1 cfm is insufficient, even if there is a
huge leak...)
A copy of this log entry has been emailed to: lindgren@jlab.org