Outhouse...

We work at a place called LDB which stands for "Long Duration Balloon". It's on the Ross ice shelf about 10km outside McMurdo, which is the main US base in Antarctica.

The facilities at LDB are really quite nice, the main buildings are just a few years old and the galley was first used last season.


The one exception is the "restroom" facilities. There are some inside restrooms, they just haven't been qualified to use yet. As a matter of fact there was an incident involving them a few weeks ago. There was a bit of a mix up as far as what and when chemicals were to be added to the johns, which resulted in a chemical fire. The hazmat team had to work for a couple of days to get things cleaned up. Now I'm not sure what the hold up is.

Which leads us to the "Outhouses". We have a total of three outhouses to choose from, none of which are heated. So I guess it's pretty obvious there isn't a lot of magazine reading while doing your business.

I should explain how these outhouses are set up. First they pick a location, then a large hole is drilled in the snow, and finally the outhouse is plopped down above the hole. I have no idea what happens at the end of the season when the outhouses are decommissioned. Maybe I'll have to check and see what they do with the hole and it's contents and make a follow-up entry.

The closest to our building is a small plywood outhouse which recently had a new seat installed, before which it was only fit for standing. The seats are made of the "blue foam" used as house insulation. They work great, no matter how cold it is outside the seat never feels cold against your tender backside.


The other two outhouses are a bit more robust and they include urinals for the guys. They have doors that close with latches similar to old refrigerators. But even with the tighter fitting doors if the wind comes up snow manages to find it's way inside. We had some snow last night with blowing conditions this morning. This is the sight I was treated to when I needed to use the outhouse.

Well, I guess I've written enough about outhouses, just thought it was an interesting aspect of life in Antarctica.

Mounting Stuff

The last couple of days we have been installing the various electronics boxes on the deck of the instrument. This was a multi stage operation which included quite a few people.

The first step is to raise the gondola so that the boxes can be moved to the door where they are picked up by the forklift.

After all the boxes are outside the instrument is moved out to the end of the hoist and lowered to the ground.

Then the boxes are carefully placed on the deck and bolted in place. The first two boxes were the main ANITA electronics box and the battery box.

The second day had us mounting the SIP (Support Instrumentation Package) to the deck.


After everything is mounted the instrument is hoisted back into to payload building and the cabling work begins.


When you're working outside and it's sunny the temperature is fairly nice, but leaving the payload doors open for around an hour chills the entire building considerably. The science folks sitting at their computers would be wearing coats and gloves by the time the operation is complete.

PV Power

I guess it's pretty obvious that with our payload flying at 130,000 feet, there's no power cord. So the instrument relies on solar power. The "PV" (PhotoVoltaic) frames were fabricated at Wash U and then shipped to Arizona to have the cells attached and wired.

The panels are very fragile and need to be handled with great care. We had to make special shipping containers for them. They will be attached to to gondola for flight.

Part of the pre-flight checkout is to test the panels to make sure they are working properly, this involves taking them outside and doing a few measurements with them exposed to direct sunlight. The conditions were right today for testing, good sunlight and no wind, so Garry and I carried the panels outside one at a time and did the measurements. It's good to get thaat test out of the way.

Slow and Steady

Work continues on the experiment. The top section is nearing completion. The assembly is slower than I would like, but is moving in the right direction. We have been assembling in a bit of a different method than in the past. We are cabling the upper equipment as the section is built up, this allows the person installing the cables to stand on the floor instead of having to use a ladder.

The pictures here show us installing the upper solar array which is used to power the CSBF equipment.


Also included with the solar array are various antennas like GPS, TDRSS and Iridium.

Transportation

Transportation is a strange thing in Antarctica, vehicles come in many shapes and sizes. We ride some type of vehicle back and forth to work every day. Some days it's "Ivan the Terrabus".

The Terrabus is a large bus designed for travel on glaciers. You would typically see them on glaciers in Canada. Actually the company that makes them is Foremost, which is a Canadian company. The Terrabus is very slow moving, it usually takes us about 45 minutes to travel the 10km to work.

Another vehicle we take to work is the "Delta", which is also made by Foremost. It is only slightly faster than the terrabus, but not as comfy. The passenger compartment is basically a metal box with bench seats along the sides. The capacity of the delta is 18 in the back including everyones ECW gear which makes for some tight quarters.

Another option, although less likely than either of the previous vehicles is the Ford vans. The vans have severe lift kits on them with huge tires. Obviously there are the most comfortable and speedy of the bunch but the capacity is far smaller. We use these either early or late in the season when the number of riders is less.

All in all the transportation here is a mixed bag, sometimes it's good, other times it's not so good. Raytheon hires people just to drive the shuttles, one driver is around 90 years old. As you can imagine when he's driving the terrabus it takes us quite a while to get to work.

Work Begins

Well it's been quite a while since my last update, I'm just not very motivated to write anything lately. I have found that there are good bloggers and there are not so good bloggers, and I feel like I belong in the second category. So if you're looking for eloquent writing I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place.
The first couple of days on the ice are pretty unpleasant, I guess your system goes through quite a lot of changes in a short period of time. But things finally settle down and things become sort of normal if that's really possible.

I have just changed rooms because my original roommate was a master snorer. If there was a certain technique of snoring, this guy had it down. Even with ear plugs it was still difficult to sleep on occasion. So I requested a room change and was finally able to move after about 5 days. The room situation is pretty fluid here with people coming and going, people arrive from Christchurch and stay in McMurdo for a few days and them move on to the South Pole. Or people are housed in McMurdo but may deploy to field camps, being gone for days at a time. So moving to a different room can be a bit of a challenge for the housing department. But I finally got it done and hopefully my sleeping will improve.

We began work the day after we arrived, but were limited as to how much work we could do to several factors. First there is numbers, Abby and I were the first to arrive here, but Abby was immediately sent to snow school which left me to work by myself for a couple of days. Second are the support personnel and equipment. It took almost two days to get a fork-lift dedicated to help us get things moved the the payload building for unpacking. But eventually things get set up and work begins.

Al of our equipment is shipped from Palestine Texas in sea containers which upon arriving on the ice are placed on what's called the "berm line" and are waiting for us to get there. Those sea containers are them moved down near the payload building and we begin unpacking. The containers have been sitting on the berm line for a few weeks so the contents are a bit on the chilly side. We do have one container that is designated as "Do Not Freeze", so it is kept indoors.


We started assembling the gondola yesterday. We had to move all the antennas in from the sea containers so it got crowded in the building pretty fast. Equipment is staged on the deck of the building and then brought inside.

Each antenna is tested before being installed on the gondola, so it's not the speediest process. Things should be shaping up more quickly this week.

I'll update again as soon as something exciting happens.

On to the ice

After getting our ECW gear issued on Sunday afternoon, Monday was our scheduled flight down to the ice. We had a 6:30am showtime, which is rather late, but I wasn't complaining about getting to sleep a little bit later than the norm.

The shuttle picked us up and took us to the CDC to begin the long process. We donned our ECW gear and then went through the "terminal", which is much like a civilian terminal but on a much smaller scale. After we got checked in we had a short time to go across the way to the Antarctic Center and get some breakfast.

At the appropriate time we went through the scanner, had our carry-on luggage scanned ad were loaded on a bus for the incredibly short ride over the the C-17. We proceeded to sit in the bus while waiting for the flight crew to be ready for us to board the plane. There was a total of 16 passengers on our flight. 12 science/support, 2 Air Force guys, and 2 Kiwi's, which is an incredibly small number. Obviously most of the plane was filled with cargo.

Being such a small number, we used the "jump seats" along the side of the plane. For those of you that have never flown on a C-17, it's an incredibly big plane, but the jump seats are surprisingly comfortable.

One advantage of small numbers on a huge plane means there is plenty of room to get comfortable during the flight, including sleeping on the floor.

It's about a 5 hour flight from Christchurch to the ice. It was an uneventful flight up until it came time to land. Apparently the visibility was less than stellar and it took three times for the pilot to put the plane down on the ice. There a very few windows in a C-17, none of which can be seen from a seated position. On final approach you can tell when the plane should be touching down, only to feel the engines revving back up and the landing gear being retracted. Then it was try number two, same result. Finally on the third try we landed on the ice.