Yesterday six emperor penguins decided to walk on through the airfield on their way to who knows where. I saw them. I did not get as close as this shuttle driver did who got this picture. These emperor penguins get big. They are 3 foot high, plus. Someone remarked that they are like small humans.
My flight to Taylor Dome is set for 7:15 AM (McMurdo Local Time which is +18 hours Eastern Time) again in a Twin Otter skiplane. I expect to be back Wednesday or Thursday. It may be longer if weather gets bad. I plan on sleeping outside in a tent. I have to install a few radios and a special GPS unit. Other than that I will be messing with the ham radios and helping out with whatever needs to be done at the camp. Expect some good pictures on my return.
I am on Weather hold for my trip to Taylor Dome. Maybe I won't get there until next week. We don't fly on Sunday normally.
Today is the day I head out to Taylor Dome on a twin otter skiplane. I have been having fun at work fixing radios and troubleshooting system issues all week. There are a lot of radios down here thats for sure. And there is a great variety. I have been reflecting on the three things that I believe make this place hospitible: Communications, Mobility, and Shelter. I find these three items to be a key classification system to understand and optimize sucesss in operating in such a harsh environment. I expect to sleep outside tonight. It will be between -25 and -40. It will be the coldest I have camped out I think. -25 below has been my coldest experience in happy camper school a few weeks ago. Before that it was with Jeff in Alfred NY. We did not have a thermometer but it was definately well below zero that night. That was few years ago but you have a tendency to remember them. Since then I have learned a lot about cold weather. Most of the lessons have come in the last month. A real good lesson is that "Don't get cold." That may sound over simple but the fact of the matter is that when you get cold it takes a lot of work to get warm again. You must pay attention to getting cool or too hot and constantly regulate your temperature buy adding or removing layers.
I will not be blogging for a couple of days. Weather plays a big part. I may be delayed by a week or even more. I don't expect to be out there past Monday. I will only be in contact by HF radio or sporadic irridum satellite phone. I will be in a deep field camp.
Here is a picture of a Basler.
It is Thursday night. It is American night over at Scott Base (the New Zealand base). It is a couple miles away. I didn't much feel like going so I didn't. My ankle is a lot better. Today a co-worker and installed a radio with a battery/solar charger in a fuel pump house. Of course that was just a small fraction of what was done today.
I received a satellite call from the folks out at Taylor Dome. They said I can slept in a heated module or with some of others who are camping outside. They said it was cold. That means (it takes a while to figure what cold means with all the unspoken context) it is between 25 and 50 below. I told them I will decide when I get there. I have to help them decide whether to dig up an antenna they see 5 feet of. The rest is buried in the snow. I am pretty sure it is a minimum of 35 feet tall which means 30 feet is under snow since 1996 (when it was supposedly installed).
It does not snow a lot here but it did today. The snow really gets moved around a lot. In McMurdo, snow and volcanic ash get blown around interchangablely and snow banks are a parfait of ash and ice. The ash isn't dirt. There is nothing growing in it. It is powdered rock. It gets in your eyes sometimes since the wind is almost always blowing.
Here is a picture I borrowed from the public domain drive on our intranet. This penguin was just below town last Saturday. Here they come. They will be coming right into town here pretty soon.
Another busy day. I am all set to go out to Taylor Dome on Saturday. Hopefully I will be getting back to McMurdo on Monday. I am scheduled to go out on a Twin Otter. I am pretty excited about being on the Twin Otter. I am not sure why. Hopefully I can get a ride back on a Basler which is a turbine powered DC-3. Last night's science lecture was about Antarctica past and future. A scientist who has been coming down since 1962 led the discussion with a lot of his personal photos. His photos included the first fossils found in Antarctica, petrified logs and all sorts of interesting geological content.
My ankle is much better. I went up to T-site today to check on a connection for the NASA folks. The picture out the truck window is on the road up to T-site. It is hard to judge heights from photos. It is at least 1000 feet down to the Ross Ice shelf. The other picture shows some of the hellium tanks for the Long Distance Balloon (LDB) project. The LDBs are launched in Antarctica sort of as a "poor man's" spacecraft. The winds go around Antarctica with sufficient reliability to launch very large balloons that can carry payloads of 6 tons and keep them at the edge of space for weeks. On top of that they can terminate the mission at their discretion and jettison the payload for recovery. They are launching a neutrino detector this year. I am not sure what else.
The guys got off the mountain last night. They had quite a time. They almost broke into the survival bags. They left the bags and some tools to come back and get them another time. I understand they had all their ECW on. That is extraordinarily unusual. One of my co-workers is out at WAIS divide (a deep-field camp). He called in on a satellite phone (we get thirty seconds of some poor reception because of the satellite being so low on the horizon. There was a pretty nasty storm going on so there was no work getting done outside. I shipped him a new HF antenna today and some climbing gear.
My ankle is getting a lot better. It is turning black today. I guess that is a good sign. The paper work is worse than the injury. --more on that one--
I worked on the NASA system today. The NASA guys were really pleased that I managed to get the stuff going even without the correct components. There is often talk of McGyver down here. You have to fix what you have to fix with what you have to fix it with. It is a challenge and a treat because that means you can spend some time fixing stuff that you would send back to the manufacturer or throw away back home.
The food here is great when you consider that 90 percent of it is regular institutional food that is way past its expiration date. We get almost all of the foodstuff from vessel, meaning we get many tons of it in February. We use that food and other food that is older the next year or the year after or so on. Some of the stories I have heard about expiration dates is hilarious. But really, the food is good. I filled out a comment card for the galley crew expressing my appreciation. They did appreciate the comment. It is on the bulletin board.
I am planning on getting on the ham bands this coming sunday when I am out at Taylor Dome. That would be rere DX to be sure. We would probably even QSL. It will be about 9 PM Next Saturday in the Eastern US. I will try 14.243 MHz. We have a spot figured out on 40 meters as well I think at 7.090 MHz. We are in ITU region 3 here. The rules get tricky for someone who hasn't spent any time trying to figure out the rules. I will be using KC4/N2TYQ. I will be using a Datron PRC-1099 with a dipole. I think it has 50 watts output. I might hit New Zealand. I am hoping for more.
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I went to medical about my ankle. The flight surgeon was quite helpful and informative. I have a minor/moderate sprain. I don't think I have ever twisted my foot so bad before. It was a good warning for me. It means that although I have been very careful I have not been careful enough. I worked in the shop today hobbling around while everyone was out in the field. My ankle is already a lot better now that I have an ace bandage on it. The startling thing has been that I can't walk as fast. People are passing me, yikes! I should be headed out to the field later this week. It got kind of nasty out there today anyway. It is 7:15 right now and four of my co workers are still on the mountains. The weather has closed in and they can't get them off. They were supposed to be picked up about 4:00. One of them sounded kind of cold up there. Whenever we get dropped off by a helo we get survival bags which includes a tent, sleeping bag, shovel, camp stove and food. I am sure hoping they won't have to be out there too long, breaking into the survival bags. The department has had an excellent history of not having to get into the survival bags. You also don't have to worry about the gloom of night. You just have to worry about the unpredicable nasty-ass weather. Storms can last up to about 3 days. The pilots and everyone else is concerned about your safety, you have had training, you have a radio and folks know where you are. Compared to a couple of people camping or mountain climbing this is much safer and secure. We have infrastructure.
Werner Herzog the director of documentaries like "Grizzly Man" is on the ice and I was supposed to fix him up with some radios today. We also received some Distinguished Visitors (DVs) today for whom we set up some wireless. Senator McCain was down last year. It was also weird getting a phone call from someone out in the field who was having a problem with their HF radio. That is fun work helping someone with an HF radio problem.
This is a picture of McMurdo General Hospital, AKA Medical.
