Tuesday 22 November 2005
Busy, busy, busy
With the end of the winter is rapidly approaching and things are really starting to get busy here as we prepare the base for the summer season. Unfortunately this has impacted on my diary writing time so excuse the delay since the last entry.
By now we were expecting to have had several planes visiting but that hasn't turned out to be the case, a spell of bad weather has now delayed the return of the Basler flight until later in the summer. The first BAS plane is now likely to be the next one to arrive, which is due in the next week or two (weather permitting). That means that we'll be receiving our first fresh fruit and vegetables, not to mention mail, since the ship sailed away back in February.
Since my last post you may also have noticed that the temperature reading on the left of the page has been creeping up steadily. From average temperatures of -30C during the winter the transition to summer temperatures has been a rapid but most welcome change. On calm days when the bright sun is beating down it feels as warm as a summer's day back home. The other day it was -8C and I was able to work outside all afternoon, quite comfortable in just jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of sunglasses. After six months wearing layer after layer it's quite liberating!
We've been taking advantage of all this warm weather to get a lot of much needed base work done. There is a lot of preparation required to get the base ready for the summer, such as surveying the buildings and masts, preparing all the vehicles for the coming season, starting up the summer accommodation building and giving the base a good spring clean to make space for next year's cargo.
On the science side we've been busy preparing to raise the SHARE antennaes, which will be a big summer job. There are sixteen masts, each with a cross beam carrying a set of elements that need to have an extra mast section added to keep them from getting buried. That means moving all the transmitter boxes (which are attached to the masts) higher, as well as all the associated cabling and the caboose that the signal is fed to. We also spent one day putting together some of the new mast sections - quite a fun job in the sunshine (like playing with a giant toy construction kit).
We also had some problems with one of the other experiments this month and had to dig down to a receiver box which was installed a couple of summers ago. The box was only 50cm by 30cm but as you can see the hole we had to dig was substantially larger:
The pit we dug to access the PMSE receiver box
We started off digging by hand but quickly hit rock hard ice at a depth of about 2 metres. After that Gareth came to our assistance with the bulldozer, reaching about 4 metres before the ice got too hard even for the dozer to shift. We still hadn't found the box so we continued using pickaxes to break up the ice. It was with some relief that we eventually found it at a depth of 4.8 metres beneath the snow, a good example of just how much everything gets buried down here! Once we'd got to it the problem was pretty easy to resolve - the movement of the snow had pulled the main feeder cable out of its socket. By rearranging the electronics inside we were able to get enough slack to reattach it. The repair was made just in time - a few days later we picked up our first echo of the summer season:
PMSE (Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes) are a summer-only phenomenon. They were first found in the Arctic but this experiment detected the first Antarctic PMSE when we installed it two years ago.
Although we've been busy, it's not all been work, work work. To take advantage of all the fine weather we hosted a party on the Piggott open platform at the weekend. Although normally it's just a work platform the Piggott has a very handy north facing verranda which acts like a sun trap and blocks out any wind from the south or east. We put up a couple of hammocks and benches and brought over some speakers to provide music making it into a quite respectable venue. When the sun did eventually get too low and the temperature dropped we all retired into the office for a few more drinks.
The Piggott party. Drinks on the open platform (above) before retiring to the warmth of the office (below). Photos by Jeff.
There's still plenty more base work to do over the coming days and weeks. Jobs include setting up tie downs for the planes, raising the 3km radar marker, raising the stocks of empty fuel drums ready for their removal in the summer, and setting up the incoming and outgoing cargo lines. I've also got to collect together all my personal belongings and pack them away (as I want to send most things out on the ship before the start of the summer), write my end of year reports and handover notes, not to mention squeeze in as much kiting as possible!
Posted by simon at 9:18 PM | Feedback (7)