It is fairly easy to notice we have a lot less people on station now. The lower population causes less congestion during my daily walking commutes (mostly around the galley). The station population will grow a little bit, then ramp down quickly to 120 people slated to winter over. Feb 24 is the last flight and the offical start of winter at McMurdo. The offical start to winter for South Pole is February 14th.
The photos some ANITA one of the long distance balloons that was launched a while back http://amanda.uci.edu/~anita/
The station mode is changing. We are changing from primarily an aviation supported group to marine supported. The Swedish ice breaker ODEN is more than halfway through the sea ice to station. They will be here is another day or so. It is pretty strange to consider that the ship will essentially be cutting a channel through our early-season ice runway where we were landing Air Force C-17s just a few week earlier. We are still hoping the sea ice will blow out to sea.
Ice breakers don't really cut through the ice. They have a hull that allows them to slide up on the ice and the ship breaks the ice by its weight. The ship goes back and forth breaking up the ice that is almost 9 feet thick. Pumps are used to transfer ballast and pump water on top of the sea ice to lubricate it so the ship can more easily move on top of the ice.
A co-worker got word that he will be on the Nathanial B. Palmer for a cruise or two after February. Getting this work on the research ships can be very competitive.
The bad news is we have a sick llama.
I went up to the ham shack last night. The 20 meter band opened up and the next thing I knew I has working the pointy end of a very large pile up. We did do some rag chewing and some of the contacts were especially fun. I will have to spend some more time up there. We have another 2 day weekend coming up for new years. I am going to volunteer in the galley, cleanup around the ham shack, and work on my movie.
This photo of a skua and her chick was given to me by a co-worker. The orca picture was taken last year in the shipping channel. The shipping channel is a cut in the sea ice made by an ice breaker in order to get the supply ships (and others) to the ice pier here at McMurdo. The Swedish Ice Breaker "Oden" is cutting the shipping channel this year. We are still hoping the sea ice will breakup and move out leaving a liquid McMurdo Sound.
Work is slow. We are between science teams I guess. I lot of scientist have headed home in time for the holidays. Some have just headed out in the field. I am fixing shortwave transceivers today. The shortwaves are primarily used as backup comms for the field parties. Primary comms are generally done with iridium satellite phones. The HF radios get issued with the following materials; a durable case, 2 batteries, a radio, a solar charger, a microphone-handset, a tuned dipole and instructions. Good luck! The radios are good for 20 watts which is fine for this purpose. You can contact Pole or McMurdo depending on the frequency you select. We use 5 different frequencies. Of course we have very good radios systems at both Pole and McMurdo stations.
I snagged this pic from our common drive here on station. A bunch of penguins came to town the other day. I missed them though.
We find ourselves talking about our favorite foods that we can't get (or enough of) on station. Pizza, chicken wings, pickled herrings, and nachos came up today. It is a strange assortment of folks on station that’s for sure as part of these discussions. I was talking to a Dining Assistant (DA) last night that has retired from a telecom job and lives in Mountain View CA (near Stanford) with no bills, and is now washing dishes and resupplying napkins. The pay for a DA is almost nothing. I think it is less than minimum wage. This brings me to the very arcane laws here. I mean very arcane. You have to figure a jurisdiction and then argue legalities from that point. My employer is in Denver Colorado, in the US. My permanent residence is in NY. I am living on a US sponsored science base on a continent where no country owns the land and no passport is required to enter.
Work is kind of slow compared to how it has been.
This is a picture of me at Scott base a few nights ago. Thursday nights are American night, inviting us Americans over from McMurdo station. They have a store and a pub. The pub is much nicer than anything over at our base. It is more like a regular English style pub where people come and talk and it is more like a living room than a saloon.
The ham radio shelter here on station is organizationally "unowned." I was pretty disappointed about the lack of care and support for amateur radio at McMurdo. But now, I have at least one email saying a department "does not" have the resposibility of the ham station. Organizationally, it appears that having the responsibility is good if it works for you and bad if it works aganist you. And that a choices can be made in this regard. South Pole station has a Amateur radio club that has offical ties into the organization and they have an active ham radio community. It is totally different at McMurdo. A couple of us pried 20 meters open the other night with contacts in Hawaii, Japan, Pacific Maritime Mobile, Australia and New Zealand.
The other pic is our National Science Foundation station representative posing with community-made gingerbread houses at Christmas dinner. I like the the mobilehome one complete with a car getting an engine pulled.
It is Christmas on the ice. A white Christmas is pretty much inevitable I suppose although it is kind of gray and a little breezy today. There is volcanic dust blowing around a bit and it feels kind of dirty and cold outside. I opened my presents I had here and Bonnie sent me photos of the others. She didn't even have to wrap them. Our dinner last night was fairly spectacular. We had lobster tails, beef wellington and roast duck. Life is harsh in Antarctica, just not here, just not today. I went the chapel at 12:00 midnight and that was sort of weird having a midnight mass with the sun shinning thru the stained glass. There is just no getting used to that sun. I gave some sneak previews of my video I will be entering in the film festival on January 22nd. I will being doing some more editing, but I think the bulk of the work is over for now.
This morning an individual comes running up to me in the galley morning, "Charlie, Charlie", he says... I didn't recognize him at first. It took me a couple of minutes. We met early in the season and has been out in the field for the last 7 weeks. He lost a lot of weight and grew his beard. He also had a peculiar look like I was the first human he had seen. And in some ways I guess I was. He had some great stories and it was interesting watching him describe stuff and decompress over his experiences of tent fires and the night he almost died. They are back now and it sounds like they did some great science. What a difference between these science camps and the main stations. There is no comparison.
I got on the ham radio this morning and made a nice contact on the north island of New Zealand. I will be going up there later to see what else I can raise.
