It is Sunday. The day off. I slept in to 7:30 AM this morning. I usually get up at 5:00. I had coffee in the galley and talked about the International Trans-Antarctica Scientific Expedition (ITASE) traverse with the crew supervisor. He is an interesting guy with 35 years experience in the arctic. Most of the equipment is buried in the snow (from over the winter) at Taylor dome. They are going to take more equipmnet out in a Herc (LC-130) including a Piston Bully equipped with ice radar on a boom out front. We talked about radio and what they are using for frequencies for the aviation services. The aviation support is provided by a mix of miltary and private contractors. It is good to see that kind of cooperation.
This is a "Delta". This particular unit is configured for cargo. Others have a passenger (PAX) compartment. They have grafitti and stickers on the inside of the PAX compartment. They are McMurdo's equivilent to an urban train. If you squint your eyes while riding (like when you are nodding off) the expereince is almost an identical experience to a subway train ride. They wobble side-to-side just like a train and they have mechanical and engine noises to round out the senses.
This is the ham shack. I will be up there later this afternoon for my first attempt. It will be 8 or 9 PM in the eastern US when I try 20 meters on upper side band (USB) with a kilowatt. Exact frequencies/times are forthcoming. This is just the intro.
I didn't get to do any flying today. We had all the gear ready to go at the helo pad, got weighed and everything and the pilot said he was going to cancel. He was apologetic. He's the boss. He makes that decision and it is him who has to get back in there to get me home in a few hours after we set the equipment up. I don't want to be stranded, although we would be ok because of the training and survival kits etc. The trip will be rescheduled for this coming week. There will be a lot more as well. So I spent most of the day working in the shop fixing all sorts of weird things. I even took a look at a Bridgeport Mill control board. I do like fixing electronics. We had a departmnet meeting today as well. There are about 25 people in the IT department. There is a good mix. My job is a cross discipline job since I work on systems and I am often alone out in the field. I work on a very wide variety of stuff from TVRO dishes with satelite receivers with Cisco 2500 routers to 900 MHz, freq hopping point to points, to field HF rigs, to military gear, to Cisco wireless 802.11x, to Iridium phones, to radio systems that function as regular phones out in the field. There is more variety that I even thought, which is good. I am going to attend "Sea Ice" training Monday. That class will teach me about how to read cracks and conditions for traversing sea ice as well as items such as how to pitch a tent on the ice during high winds. I will also get trained on the Pisten Bully which is a tracked vehicle suitable for traverses.
Today it was about 15 below with 35 knot winds. That wind is a killer.
The big talk on station is whether the first pole flights of the year can happen. It was -64 at pole today and the don't attempt it until it warms to -50. So what may happen is some of the deep field camps might get put-in sooner. I had dinner with a guy I know who is probably leaving for the Western Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS) deep field site on Monday. He will be out there for 4 months. He is the medical person. There will be a maximum of 75 people at that camp. It is a 4 hour plane ride in an LC-130 (presumablely longer if they end up going in the DC-3). There is nothing out there. Nothing but flat ice, wind and cold. They have a multi-year project going on out there drilling thousands of feet deep for studies.
It is Saturday night in Mactown and we get one day off a week, Sunday. I am not sure I can handle it. I do have some paper work to do and I did make arrangemnets to get a tour of the hydroponic garden as well as finally get up to the Ham shack. Maybe I will get on the air. The I will see what it is like to be on the other end of a pileup. I will be setting up skeds with folks as I try and burn a hole out of the bottom of the world.
I expect to be going out to the Long Distance Balloon (LDB) out on the ice shelf soon too. It is a big project and I believe it is the principle means of measuring the ozone hole. Speaking of ozone and lack there of we were instructed on UV radiation. We actually are exposed to it all, UVA, UVB, and even UVC. Sunglasses are not for looks down here.
This is one of the small helos (A-Star). We were going to take a Bell 212 today (like the one in the background). Hopefully you have noticed that I have started uploading both hi and low res photos, click on the photo for hi res.
Here is the radio shop where I work when I am not out in the field working on radio systems.
I live in this building (bldg 210).I share my room with an antenna rigger. The whole floor shares a bathroom. The theme here is largely academic in grounding, the dorms, the science lectures, and the discussions. I suspect a lot of the labor does not recognize it as such.
I feels pretty warm this AM. It might be near zero. I went over to Scott base last night to check it out. Americans are welcome to visit on Thursdays. Some Italians were there as well. Each country has their own distinctive parka. The USAP has the big Red ones. We affectionately call they them "Big Red". The parkas are quite amazing. They have 15 specifically designed pockets.
Next Tuesday we are planning on me flying out by helo to the Dry Valleys, Lake Bonney to be specific. The photos from there will be spectaular.
This picture is the plane that flew me in last Saturday. It is an US Airforce C-17. As you can see from earlier pics they let me up on the flightdeck for the view. That plane is the most stable aircraft I have ever been on. They land here (this time of year (for a couple more weeks) almost every day (one flight). They turn the plane around in about an hour usually. It brings all of the supplies this time of year including fresh fruits and veggies (freshies), mail, parts and people. I just heard at lunch that the LC-130 flights (on skis) may start to the pole station tommorow. No one has been in or out of the pole since Feb 2006 I think.
Here I am participating in the "Happy Camper School". Did you know that the first sign of hypothermia is a bad attitude?
What an experience.
Wow. What an experience. I have been here only a couple of days and I cannot believe what I have done.
Work is off to a good start. I easily fixed my first real radio repair job, a Motorola MCX-1000. I then gut put into survival school unexpectedly which was good because I can't get in the helos or other aircraft until I get that under my belt. We spent two days training outside. The temps got down to about 25 below with 12 knot winds. The creating of the frosty beard photograph was just a little too easy. It will get posted. I learned a lot and there was a lot to learn in a short time. It was an absolutely unbelievable experience. I slept very well out there. Getting out of the sack is the painful part. We called one person in to get evaced with hypothermia. Other people in my class were with Sir Edmound Hillary in 1957. Yes, its True. Hillary is coming down this season, probabaly to campaign againist the new traverses, which another associate of mine is the crew supervisor. This experience is being in the middle of some very exciting stuff. If that wasn't enough, I was filmed as part of a documentary today and yesterday in my training class. My beard frost was very photogenic. The producer is an emmy award winning producer for documentaries and I heard here speak the other night. My brain is full and the galley just opened.
Best quote heard in out training debrief: "I made a pact with my body. I said; body, don't make me have to get up to pee tonight and I will get you beer tomorrow" Whoo Hooo!
Photos are coming.
Sunlight all the time is weird. I worked until 6 pm and you expect to go out to a dark world (since it is so cold out)only to find is just as bright as you did at lunch. It is like tht 24 hours. There will be getting no used to that. Its just not right.
My first real work day went well. I went up to a site just out of town called "T-site". It was at least 20 below with a 25 mph wind. You have to dress. It looks like I will not be out in the field until after the 24th or so. I can't get into some of the training. I am in fall hazard training tomorrow.
I have to figure a better way to upload photos. I have lots already. I have video of me getting off the c-17 and a helo taking off and some other stuff and I have only been here two days. We don't have great bandwidth here so you really need to optimize your use-time (currently 5:51 AM Monday)and plan ahead.
Amazing, they said something about 48 hrs being an introduction period. What an experience. I am trying to settle in with a new optimized routine. !8 weeks left to go. I can make it as well as thrive. It is important.
I went to work for about 4.5 hrs on Sunday (normally our day off) I have a bit of a learning curve with some new equipment. I am working on a lot of different radios including FreeWave frequency hoppers (900 Mhz), Cisco wireless bridges (direct sequence 802.11 2.4 Ghz), Iridium phones, Optaphones, Harris RF stuff, Datron PRC-1099, ICOM & Standard HTs (Marine, Aero and Mobile), Motorola GM 300s and a bunch of other stuff. There are 8 VHF/UHF networks out of McMurdo. All of which have a repeater system of some sort usually a mix of VHF and UHF. Things are pretty well documented and standardized. My job is to get these systems working for the summer season after being mothballed for the winter. So that means a lot of site visits. The photos of these sites are absolutely incredible. There are 2 other people doing my job and it appears one of the hobbies is to retreive unusual rocks (If there are any, this place is 98% ice) from these extraordinary locations atop mountains and field camps. In addition to setup and teardown for the season, I have to fix whatever, whenever it breaks.
Overall it is a really strange experience being here. The rocks on the ground, the weather, we might as well be on another planet. And this is the one of the milder places to be! Last night at dinner we had a loud discussion regarding an ethical dilemma that if we lost our supply lifeline, would you kill a human to survive. It didn't seem as hypothetical as these discussions usually are.
