ice

We finally got some of the first response gear issued to us. Hurrah! The First Response Team commander is leaving to get married, so I’ve been officially handed command of Team 1! I need to get us some command and control training lined up badly, if our team is going to handle On Scene Command during an emergency.

And I get to put a nickname on the back… so…

Also, we’re finally able to move forward on installation of the new antenna…

Here’s the reflector and s-band feed being assembled on the ice prior to being mounted.

Here’s me in front of one of the HAM antennas we were working on t/sing.. the 20 meter version in this case.

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone! Thanks to everyone who managed to get me stuff down here on the ice, it made it all a bit less lonely. X D

Wow, Christmas dinner last night was impressive. Beef Wellington, two lobster tails, Pinot Noir, cheesecake, fudge, all by candle light with live music. They really do go all out down here.

So today we had the “Race Around the World!” In which everyone raced around the world 3 times. I was certainly too lazy to run, so we took a decked out Pisten Bully.

And woohoo! We kind of got second place! X D

Jeremy and Chrissy spent all night decking out a Pisten Bully to look like… well..

Lots of hilarious video that I can’t upload too. X D

So anyway, it wasn’t until I had been down here a little while that I found out that there is a network of ice tunnels, deep under South Pole Station, bringing water and waste into and out of the depths of the ice.

Other than the lighting and the insulated piping, there’s not a whole lot down there. Except for the shrines. There are a number of creepy shrines cut into the sides of the ice, deep down where no one goes. The ambient temperature is below -60°F, so cold in fact that the little thermometer I keep on my jacket (its lowest temperature is -20, so it’s meant to tell me when it’s warm out. XD ) broke because it was too cold! So people rarely go down there.

Long view down one of the main tunnels.

Chris, one of the Raytheon network engineers, standing amidst the ice crystals.

Chris taking some photos amongst the ice stalactites.

End of the line for us and the tunneling team!

Me in the famous old station dome! It’s used for food storage now.

Me in one of the tunnels.

Entry to the old dome from the outside.

New hole drilled deep into the ice - called a Rod Well, it will provide fresh water for the station by cycling warm water down into it.

Looking up one of the frozen tunnel escape hatches.

Alarm panel in the old Skylab laboratory.

Piston removed from one of the 1MW station power generators.

South Pole Station gravity well experiment. Not sure how it works, I suppose I should have asked the physicist I was exploring with. X D

The physicist climbs down into a tunnel.

A small shrine, seemingly dedicated to popcorn garlands… o.0

One of the creepier shrines, a frozen pig’s head dedicated to the first new station Winter Over crew.

A hardhat - not sure if it’s dedicated to an injured or deceased crew member.

The coolest shrine! A dried up sturgeon and some caviar! The full story can be viewed (kind of) in the next image.

Story telling how the sturgeon got there, as a gift from the Russians!

A shrine for the Kiwi winter overs.

A shrine for some visiting firemen from Palmer Station.

Okay… it’s a partial video because it got clipped while uploading… but yeah. It’s a video from the ice tunnel. You wouldn’t BELIEVE how hard it is to get video out of here.

Story about my satellite uplink down here and the goodnight of Marisat.

http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/contentHandler.cfm?id=1639

“The TDRS F1 satellite is now shouldering the burden for primary communications for South Pole Station, as it carries bulk science research data at an amazing volume of 100 gigabytes per day, and recently achieved a record 126 gigabytes per day.”

That was all me, baby! X D

And now, a couple of pictures for you…

First, the South Pole Telescope as seen at 02:00 in the morning.

And next, our very own Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth class…

Also, today is day number 6 of my exercise regimen. It’s not as intense as it could be - on purpose - since I’ve been able to continue it every day for the last 5 days! If I keep this up, it will progress over the next few months and I will, conceivably, get into great shape. Right now, it’s just a half hour routine of stretching, pushups and situps, walking, jogging, walking and jogging, all timed by a specific playlist of music on my MP3 player. I plan on sticking to this, with no exceptions, 6 days a week.

Now - off to test the backup transmitter system I put together, with live data this time! X D

So last night, I finally finished Bram Stoker’s great classic novel Dracula!

I’m not going to bother with an in-depth review of the book except to say the following:

The story is nothing at all like I expected. Having been inundated by “Dracula” and vampire kitsch since I was born, I had no real desire to read this novel at first. I’m not a big “vampire” fan, really. However, having completed it tonight, I can firmly say that this book will go down as one of my favourite reads of all time. Why? Because it is nothing LIKE the vampire kitsch. This is a brilliant adventure novel with carefully crafted and lovable characters, presented from a logical and down-to-earth perspective. The book is written, first person, in the form of journal entries of the various characters. It lends itself to both to incredible characterization and a natural, if retrospective, plot progression.

In any event, the most important aspects of the work are the ones that are so often glossed over by the recreations of the vampire kitsch, so I would really recommend this even if you’ve no interest in some of the concepts that, though now worn out, were groundbreaking in this novel.

And, on a side note, I shall leave you with a view peering down one of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory’s drill holes, with sensor orbs being placed!

01:00 this morning.

Over the loudspeaker:

“Attention! Attention! There has been a fire reported in:

*recorded voice* sccckkkk… The Fuel Depot.

Attention! Attention! There has been a fire reported in:

*recorded voice* sccckkkk… The Fuel Depot.”

I jump out of bed, grab my radio and try to throw on my ECW gear. So many people are talking on the radio I can’t understand anything. Grab my kit and run out into the hall, amongst firefighters who already have all their gear on… we exit the station and…

“Attention south pole. Attention south pole. Please disregard, this is a false alarm. Repeat, disregard, this is a false alarm.”

EVERYBODY groans.

Oh well, I had to get up anyway. I ran a test with NASA in White Sands this morning - doubled our S band data rate to 5 mbps… now if only the packet shaper in Denver would be modified to support the increase. *rolls eyes*

Too tired to go back to bed, so I took a shower and did laundry. Gonna have a nap at some point today, in preparation for the “Big Lebowski” and SPIF (South Pole International Film Festival) showing tonight. If you come in a bath robe to the Lebowski party, you get free White Russians!

Meet me and Brian’s new mascot - the COMMS penguin! X D The product of hours upon hours of careful fabrication >.> He takes messages for Brian, when Brian’s out of the office and sleeping in busy.

Also, after being broken down 300 miles out for several weeks, the Norwegian traverse finally made it to the South Pole! Here’s them, tired, cold and hungry, making their way in off the ice.

And finally, it’s Dan, waving his wrench around like a mad man, next to an LMC.

That is all for now.

Mail! Mail! I have received mail! And just in the nick of time, as well. I was out of deodorant.

The packages Glor sent 3 weeks apart arrived together, as well as a yellow manila envelope from a friend that I had been expecting. The big surprise with the envelope was the following, however:

Indeed - as is not unheard of, my mail had been reviewed by New Zealand Customs. The true hilarity, however, lied in what media was enclosed, that I’m sure gave the Kiwis a start. Primarily a DVD titled as follows:

Also good for a laugh is the fact that the letter that came with it appears to have been opened and read.

And finally, a crappy shot of my desk in my room, taken with what is left of the battery power in my failing digital vid cam. (that is, if I can get it to upload being in the final 10 minutes of the GOES 3 pass).

So anyway, tt was IT’s day to cook lunch for everyone - to give the kitchen staff a break. They gave everyone a menu of things we were SUPPOSED to be cooking - grilled cheese and tomato soup. EZPZ, right? Well, me and Brian - the COMMS tech and my partner in COMMS - got to looking around and we decided we wanted to do something MORE! So.. we fiddled around online, looked through the freezer, and over about an hour, invented a recipe to try, en masse, and feed 260 people!

So here’s what we came up with. We had leftover scrambled eggs to work with… so we decided on an egg salad. Well… while looking about, I found some salmon… so we’re like… egg salad and salmon could go together maybe… and after some fiddling, Brian and I jointly concocted…

Salmon and Egg Tarticce con toasto!

Basically, it’s a mixture of dill, egg, mayo, mustard and some other stuff I don’t remember, underneath a covering consisting of shredded salmon mixed with melba toast crumbs, served on toast!

People shied away from it at first… but slowly, ever so slowly, people started coming back - seconds, thirds… they recommended it to people… and they ate it all!!! X D We are so proud, it was so awesome! And the piece-de-resistance was when Claude came in from the dish room and the head chef commented that he’d never had anything like that salmon thing, but it was really good! X D Is that not awesome or what? On something me and Brian just cobbled together!

In any event, later in the day, we had a scheduled supply drop from a C-17 Globemaster III from Christchurch. Certainly one of my favourite aircraft, as mentioned before.

The first pass went fine, and the cargo parachuted nicely to the ice, and was quickly recovered by the waiting cargo crew.

The second drop… well… I’ll let the photos tell the story.

Cargo away went find, all the parachutes appeared to have deployed correctly! However, at some point, it appears one of the cargo chutes got caught on another piece of cargo and torn open.

It plunged quickly towards the ice.

And impacted in a huge puff of snow and wood, in front of (cheering) cargo personnel. X D

At which point the C-17 did a couple of flybys…

… And I even caught the navigator filming the station from the cockpit!

In any event… here’s a random photo from inside the station - showing the main hall and the colour coded pods.

And also - my boss Henry holding a piece of the OLD satcom antenna dome from the early eighties.

And finally - Henry and some of the crew on the RF deck observing the air drop!