PWI was successfully powered on after launch at 0715 EST on Tuesday, February 27, 1996.

The Plasma Wave Instrument (PWI) exhibited an undervoltage condition on the digital power monitor (DPM) and lost all digital telemetry at approximately 16:53:04 UT on 16 September 1997. At approximately 21:15 UT on that same day, power to the instrument was turned off in order to try and assess the problem. Power on/off cycling was then commenced for a period of about two weeks until it was determined that the probable source of the problem was an "open" (~10 ohm) circuit occurring in the power supply cutting current to the digital logic. Since there is only one component that constitutes a single point failure, we surmise that this open occurred at the power inductor. In this case, it was decided that cycling the instrument on and off would have no positive effect. Thus, as of 6 October 1997 the instrument power will remain on even though it is still in an undervoltage condition and can provide PWI with no data. Leaving the power on has two benefits: 1) EFI has access to the PWI magnetic search coil antennas, and 2) the search coils are prevented from becoming too cold during long eclipse periods.

All 5 PWI receivers (Sweep Frequency Receiver, Multi-Channel Analyzer, Wideband Receiver, High Frequency Waveform Receiver, and Low Frequency Waveform Receiver) were functioning nominally at the time that the instrument failed.

Data processing of the survey Sweep Frequency Receiver and Multi-Channel Analyzer data had been carried out within two to seven days of data acquisition. Data processing of the survey Wideband Receiver data had been carried out about one to two months after data acquisition. Wideband data is not received at The University of Iowa until ~4 weeks after data acquistion in order to save costs on mailing. All survey data products can be found under the section entitled "PWI Data" on the PWI home page.