- Sunday, 1 October 1995
-
After weeks of trying, we finally made it out to the ice caves.
The time change to daylight savings time (one hour forward) didn't help
any - as soon as
The Erebus
closed, it was suddenly 02:00. We assembled at 09:00 and headed out to the
Ice Tongue in a
Delta. It was
fairly still, not cold and very overcast. I slept for most of the trip
(I'm told there are pictures). Once there, one by one, we climbed the
aluminum ladder into a crawl hole that lead to a navigable passage and a
slope up to the rear of the cave area. Out of the direct light of the
sun, we were surrounded in soft blue light, tinted by the ice that made up
the caves. No lamps were required in any room; there was always plenty of
light to see by (and take pictures by). Some of the passages had ropes
anchored to the walls. They didn't help, I slipped anyway;
bunny boots
have zero traction.
Snapping pictures the whole time, I went up that initial slope, down a
long, narrow passage and to a fork. There were caverns in three
directions; I visited them all. The one to the right was especially high,
over 30' (10m). I crawled through a few more passages and then it was
time to go. We had only been there 45 minutes, but the weather was
starting to turn, so we left. When we emerged into the bright, white
light, it was still
Condition 3,
turning worse by the minute. I got colder walking from the cave entrance
back to the Delta than I did while crawling around in the caves. The
driver put the pedal to the metal and got us home in time for Sunday
Brunch.
Because of all the prep work I did this past week,
Babylon 5
went well at the (summertime) Coffee House. I showed the last of the
tapes from airdrop
("Hunter,
Prey")
and the first of the tapes I borrowed from Scott Humpert
("There All
the Honor Lies").
I hope we get some mail before I leave for R&R, or there won't be any
new epsiodes to show when I get back.
- Monday, 2 October 1995
-
There was a send-off party for Sharon Hauer at the Coffee House last
night. It was mostly
NSFA folks, Connie
Garcia and myself the only ASA'ers. Sharon brought some champaigne
and we toasted to a good WinFly season. Because of her studies, this was
probably her only season down here. I get the impression that she didn't
like it much when she arrived, but she warmed up to the place pretty
quickly.
Tonight, the Erebus was crowded by all the people who are here for their
last night or to see off people who are here for their last night. The
first
'141
lands tomorrow at 13:00, officially ending WinFly and starting MainBody.
- Wednesday, 4 October 1995
-
To my good fortune, I received a work order to retrive a printer from the
Ice Runway. After I finished with my morning tasks, John Booth and I
headed out to make the pick up. We arrived in time to see the
C-5 appear over
the Transantarctic Mountains; iMt was black against the nearly cloudless
sapphire blue sky and the starkly white peaks. As it made its approach, it
seemed to hover over the runway for almost a minute. Just as it was about
to make its final descent, it pulled up and flew by at less than 800 feet
(I was told later that the tower wanted to test the TACAN navigation
system before landing the plane). I shot half-a-roll on the first
approach and flyby, and (hopefully) got a great shot of the C-5, low over
the tower, passing a huge gibbous moon. The second approach was for real,
and it touched down and screamed by, slowing down faster than I ever
could have imagined possible. It finally took a left turn at the tower
and parked about 300 yards away from where I'd left the van. As I was
getting ready to leave, I stopped to locate my sunglasses; I'm glad I did
- if I had left right away, I'd have missed the plane opening up the cargo
hatch. On most planes, this isn't anything to write home about; on a
C-5, the cargo is loaded in from the front of the plane - the
entire nose lifts up and out of the way. I snapped several pictures,
including a few of passengers disembarking. Seeing little tiny people
emerge from a tiny hatch really shows how huge that thing is.
One of the most striking things about the whole experience was that between
the line of people and trucks watching the approach and landing,
the lack of trees and buildings around the runway and the way the plane
hung in the sky for a few moments, it reminded me of scenes of the Space
Shuttle landing at Edwards Airforce Base. Maybe someday I'll get the
chance to compare the two from personal experience.
- Friday, 6 October 1995
-
It's about 16:00; I've got an hour to collect my stuff and head over to the
MCC for transportation to the Ice Runway. I was in the
CSEC library
(upstairs phase I) when the
C-5 came in.
Watching in the telescope that's up there, I followed its approach right up
to landing. This time, the plane landed on a crosswind approach, providing
an excellent show for those of us in town who were watching.
There were no shuttles to
Scott Base
last night; John Ethridge and I decided to walk. We got as far as
Cosray and saw
a truck parked outside, so we stopped to warm up. Mark Hervig was inside,
trying to track a descending package with little luck. After he made a
few attempts to reaquire the signal, we all headed over the hill. I got a
chance to say farewells to a few of their winter-over team and found that
I won't be in the right places at the right times to hook up with any of
them on this brief trip.
It looks like my current plans are to spend a week in
Christchurch and then go up to
Wellington to visit the members of
Many Hands,
a Kiwi band I met because they will be broadcasting a concert via CU-SeeMe
on October 27th.
- Tuesday, 24 October 1995
-
It's dinner-time. I just got back from helping Mark Hervig and Bruno Nardi
(S-131) launch a particle counter. It all started last night when I left
the coffee house for
my office in Crary Lab
wide awake from the refreshing novelty of midnight sun (and two
cafe au lait's :-) I was catching up on two weeks of backlogged
e-mail when I took a break and peered out my window at the sun nearly
setting behind
Mt. Aurora,
and the rich colors on the ice shelf painted by the low, sidelong light. I
ran down to Phase II with my camera and spotted Mark in his lab,
babysitting an ozone sonde. After I snapped a few pictures of
Herc's at the
Ice Runway,
lit from behind, I came back in to see what Mark was up to. He and Bruno
were debating on whether or not to launch a particle counter based on
telemetry that indicated that the temperatures at 30km were around
-79°C (-110°F). At around 04:00, they decided to postpone the
launch until noon to give them a chance to get some sleep before their
helo ride to
recover a previously launched package. I got a little sack time myself and
worked a full morning. After lunch, Mark and Bruno were back and preparing
the package. The winds were still low, the upper atmosphere was still cold
and the launch was still on. Everything came together just before dinner.
We all went down to the pad (behind B-156), Mark stretched out the
protective tarps and unpacked the balloon. Bruno went back to the Lab to
turn on the instrument package and bring it down while Mark, Paul Sullivan
(the CSEC Electronics Technician) and I filled the balloon. Once filled,
Bruno returned with the instrument package and he and Mark finished final
assembly of the payload. Dangling from the balloon (in order) was the
"dropper", a racheted reel assembly that allows the instrument
to descend below the vortex created beneath the rising balloon; the
release mechanism, consisting of a barometric device coupled to a timer
that fires a "squib" which cuts the instrument free at a
predetermined time (usually 46 minutes) after the balloon reaches a
predetermined altitude (usually 5 millibars); a parachute section, which
also contains a squib (to cut the 'chute free when the package
hits the ground); the "tinkertoy", a brightly colored structure
made of neon-colored plastic tubing and PVC pipe which carries the
electronic locator beacon and the GPS transmitter; and finally, at the
very bottom, the styrofoam and foil box which contains the particle
counter itself.
When the winds were as calm as they were going to get, Mark peeled
off the yellow protective plastic from the balloon below the
"bubble" as Bruno went hand-over-hand and let the bubble rise a
little bit at a time, until the entire envelope was floating freely. Mark
quickly ran around to the end of the instrument chain and picked up the
particle counter, while I held the tinkertoy. Mark and I walked toward
Bruno as he released more and more of the payload until we were nearly on
top of him. On a four count, Bruno let go entirely and I let the
tinkertoy fly out of my hands when the line went taut. The instrument
package followed and the balloon was aloft. We watched it rise nearly
straight up in the unusually calm winds until it vanished into the low
clouds.
- Friday, 27 October 1995
-
Tonight's the
Many Hands
concert,
"World
Without Strangers". The
CU-SeeMe reflector in
Wellington
is up and running, but nobody is transmitting anything. I haven't gotten
any e-mail from anyone in the band today, so I really don't know what's
going on.
I haven't been up to much lately. I've been sick since the day after I
got back from R&R;
The Crud strikes
again. Mostly, I've been going to the coffee house and relaxing with old
friends who are leaving and meeting new friends who are just arriving.
- Saturday, 28 October 1995
-
First times frequently have rough edges; the
"World Without
Strangers" project was no exception. Because a critical
piece of software didn't arrive as planned, the 2 mbps microwave link to
the venue didn't materialize. Instead, I got to see a small snippet of
the end of the encore show when they finally got online, thanks to a
28.8Kbps modem and an impossibly long telephone cord stretching across
the parking lot. It was dark at Shed 11, but I could see some musicians
and jugglers. I stuck around until the end and crashed around 1 in the
morning.
The weather started out great as I went out on the sea ice with
Dan Gustafson of S-027. His group studies brine pockets in the ice itself
and the flora and fauna that grow in water 7 times saltier than sea water.
The rest of his group hasn't arrived yet, so he asked the lab staff if he
could get some assistance for the day. The trip to the back side of
Inaccessible Island took about an hour, including a stop by a seal colony
at Razorback Island. Our destination was right by the pressure ridge I
visited at
Sea Ice school.
We used the kovacs drill to test the ice thickness where we were standing
(2.3 m), then carried our equipment and supplies to the other side of the
crack. Once there, we used the Siper corer to remove a 90+ cm plug of
ice, which I sawed into nine 10cm segments. Dan drilled holes in each
one, measured the internal temperature and stored them in individually
labeled plastic tubs.
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