Happy Christmas, I Guess ...

The annoyance of being in Antarctica for Christmas, something that sounds kind of cool but isn't, has subsided.  Though this is mainly because Christmas Day is now a distant (and rather blurry) memory.

The remaining ANITA members at Christmas

So merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all!

The run up to Christmas down here was actually pretty fun.  With the ANITA cooperating nicely in all areas but its flight path everyone had the chance to kick back and relax.  I cant remember dates, because each night was all too full of sorrow drowning, but at some point I went to a Christmas show full of funny songs, founded years ago by a set of brothers down here and now something of a tradition, though only one brother was down this time around.  There has been alot of eating - I had Christmas dinner twice, once having snuck into the night shifters' Christmas meal (would have only gone to waste otherwise).  I've watched co-workers drink way too much and then breath Bicardi 151 fueled fire.  There other stories too ... but I'd better not go into them too much!

Anyway, having avoided exercise for a little too long apart from one 7 mile ski, I went on a long hike yesterday.  And seeing as my experience on Ob Hill was such fun, I joined Brian in a climb up this:

Castle Rock

Luckily I had help and motivation from Brian to climb the rock, had I been alone I doubt I'd have had the guts.  Once again, I am a pussy.

Brian on the ascent (there is a rope to hang on to pretty soon after this!)

View from the top over the sea ice

Christmas Time ...

I'm hungover and working.  Great.  Here's a photo, I hope you enjoy it......

ANITA has launched!!!

ANITA launched at about 11am NZ time on 21/12!  Fantastic!  It was also pretty good to send it off on the 2nd attempt - last year it took 7.

I'm writing this having been at work for 20 hours yesterday, with 5 hours sleep before another shift today.  Others have been awake and working longer too.  It's possible to track the payload position at http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/map/balloon8/balloon8.htm.  Not the most interesting website admittedly, but still ... here's to hoping for a nice path over the bulk of east Antarctica.

Launching the balloon is a pretty slow and painful process ... here are 4 photos representing few hours!

ANITA on the boss as the balloon gets filled with helium ... slowly ... (about 2 hours after reaching the pad)

Nearly 4 hours after getting onto the pad the balloon is finally ready to launch ...

ANITA gets released and the drop downs deploy

Now I just sit and watch data coming down.  Tomorrow I'm going to do some serious catching up on lost Zzzs.

4 hours after launch, the balloon is at 36km and fully inflated!  ANITA is still visible.

Not launch day!!!

Turns out it wasn't a launch after all.  The balloon was about to be laid out on the pad.  ANITA was ready to get attached.  The weather was so perfect even the weatherman couldn't stop us.

But then a hard drive in the SIP (support instrumentation package) failed.  So after a day of hoping, waiting, watching the goings on and of taking photos of ANITA, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to (hopefully) launch the balloon.

Fingers crossed again.  And a 4am start.

Launch Day!!!

Today is launch day!  As long as the weatherman doesn't screw us over we'll have come into work at 5:30am for a reason.  Photos will follow if anything happens ....  fingers crossed!

Hikes

As the weather gets warmer down here more hiking trails are opened up for members of the local communities to use.  Having hiked only up Ob Hill so far (unless you count my stroll along the pressure ridges) I decided I needed to get out a bit more.

A nice length walk around the coast to the West of McMurdo (Ob Hill being just to the East) got me off to a good start.  The ground here is still loose like Ob Hill, though not quite as treacherous.  But the best part was views over the sea ice - away from McMurdo and with views of neither town, LDB or Scott Base for the first time since the ice caves (when I wasn't sick of them anyway).

I've also been cross country skiing a few times, mostly around the balloon pad which isn't exactly a great distance but still leaves muscles aching.

On Thursday, to keep up the good exercise routine I joined Andres and Abby in walking all the way back to Scott Base from work.  It's about 8 miles and was pretty refreshing.  The view across the ice shelf, even towards Ross Island, just didn't change for the first hour, which was actually quite calming.

But it turns out that drinks are cheaper at Scott Base than McMurdo.  The walk home was interesting ....!

Acronyms and MacTown slang....

A little over 5 weeks ago I left London for New Zealand, my final destination being McMurdo, Antarctica.  The day after my arrival into Christchurch I made my way to the CDC.  Here I got my flu shot (final requirement of PQ) and picked up my ECW gear, necessary for the extreme cold climes of that most southerly of continents.  Most useful in this pack is Big Red, mine smells of spilt beer right now though so I don't wear it unless necessary.  The following morning, at some ungodly hour, I returned to the CDC to board the C17 bound for Pegasus.  The weather was kind, so our flight made it all the way, unlike later in the season when a number of aircraft had to boomerang.

Stepping off the plane in Antarctica I got my first sight of Erebus, standing tall and proud behind the Ivan and two Deltas.  I stupidly didn't take any photos of the plane or the mountain, got onto Ivan and headed out to MacTown.

The next five weeks have been a haze of working long hours with intermittent flurries of drinking.  I spend alot of hours at LDB as a Beaker, though I try to boondoggle now and again.  Before I could get off base for any trips or hikes I had to attend an OSL (safety first).  A couple of weeks back I got to go on Happy Camper.  Most of this was pretty fun, the hours spent in F-STP weren't great though.

At work (reached by bus from DJ) I deal with SURFs and TURFs, handle alot of BNC, TNC, SMA and N-type though I don't see much of the LARKs and SHORTs.  The other members of the team and from UH, UCLA, UW, UD and OSU.  The data we get from ANITA during flight will mainly be sent via TDRSS, though LOS is much better when available.  Right now I'm working on Ryan's MAGIC Display, trying to make pretty plots with the help of a BEDMAP image.

Our neighbours at LDB are CREAM and ULDB.  We're here with NASA and NSF funding.  I'm quite jealous of people who get to go out to base camps away from McMurdo - I've met people headed for AGAP (north and south) and WAIS divide as well as Pole.  There are also people working is ASMAs and ASPAs which must be pretty cool.

The community here is pretty odd, as expected, but I've met some pretty cool DAs, not so many GAs though, and only one PI and no DVs.  Most people in McMurdo are USAP participants, though I have met some from BAS and AntNZ.  I've been to a party in the BFC, which is near the Helo pad and MMI.  It can get dull out here, but there are activities posted on Highway 1 to help keep people occupied.

I'm trying to make the most out of being here, but I am looking forward to heading home already.  Bag drag is still a long time away though, especially with ANITA still on the ground.

Pressure (and pressure ridges)

Long time, no blog!  For the last few days I've spent most of my waking hours here:

Up the bowels of ANITA setting up cabling.

We've been taking calibration data for every channel in ANITA.  This is all highly important to the success of the project, but it would have been good if myself and Abby had only had to take each data set once ... not twice, like we've ended up doing.  It's all very frustrating, but needs doing.

ANITA suspended outside the hangar to test the drop down antennas

There has been good news for ANITA in the last week, however.  The drop down mechanism was tested and works.  Then, last Sunday, we had our hang test.  This involves setting up and hanging the instrument from the 'Boss', the vehicle used to launch the balloons from, in full flight configuration.  After a lot of stress we finally got everything ready and were passed with only a couple of minor difficulties that have since been resolved.  So now we have a period of time during which we're taking all measurements that could possibly be useful while we wait to launch.

Away from work the irritation at measurement taking hasn't been helped by a certain boredom.  It seems idiotic that I've come all this way, to a such an impressive continent that most people will never see, though many would love to, and I get bored!  So I've resolved to make more of an effort!

I did get to go on a tour of the pressure ridges just where the ice shelf meets Ross Island at Scott Base.  The ice shelf can apparently move a few feet a week, so where it meets the land large fractures form.  The ice shelf is only 8 or so feet thick here and walking along the ridges may sound dangerous, but the largest transport to work is 60 tons and crosses the ice near the ridges so I guess it's OK!  Anyway, there isn't much to tell about the walk, other than it was stunning.

Pressure ridges

An issue of charge buildup

I expected it to be cold in Antarctica.  I knew it would be dry and windy.  I'd seen photos of the amazing scenery and even kind of knew what to expect from McMurdo.  One thing I did not expect: static electricity.

Every day I get an electric shock at least once.  Sometimes I'll get shocked a load of times in the space of 5 minutes.  It's pretty annoying!  The fact that the air is so dry down here means that static, that anywhere else would dissipate, builds up very quickly.

My bed covers always feel fuzzy, even from a few inches away, and every time I take off my coat (fleece lining really doesn't help) I can feel the charge stacking up.  So putting on any man made fibers, and then grabbing a door handle delivers a quick shock - the strongest of which jump through the coat lining, so covering up a hand before touching metal doesn't help.

The oddest static moment I had, however, wasn't from grabbing metal after building up static.  I was wearing my Big Red and listening to my ipod on the way to the outhouse.  Sitting down (on the can ... picture it!), I kept getting pricks of pain in my ear.  Now, my headphones had been playing up recently and had lost their protective rubber covers - so I thought the plastic was just poking into my ear. Taking the headphones off though, I realised the covers over the speakers were metal mesh - so each time this touched my skin some of the static build up was conducted down my headphone wire.

The best way to cope with this annoyance - carry a cup of water (or stand near a tap), every time a coat is taken off/put on, wet a hand!

Boondoggling

Boondoggle (noun): A wasteful project or activity

Boondoggling (I'd never heard of it either) has assumed further meaning in McMurdo.  As well as expending resources on an unnecessary activity, it can also imply someone is simply being lazy or wasting time.  McMurdo site staff going to snow school is an example of boondoggling in the first sense.  They don't need to learn how to build a quinzy or snow wall, but they go anyway (in this case for their own enjoyment, rather than being set the task needlessly).  Having been called a boondoggler yesterday, though, I'm pretty sure the second definition of the word was being used.

It's Thanksgiving weekend, and on Friday there was a mini festival - Freezing Man (in reference to the Burning Man festival in Nevada) - held in the big gym on site.  I went along and ended up drinking a little too much whisky and going to bed a little too late.  Seeing as almost everyone has the weekend of work apart from us out at the balloon facility there were no regular shuttles out to work.  My only option yesterday was to get a bus at 7:30am.  As I'm sure you've guessed, I missed it, slept until 11 and then boondoggled my way through the day.  Ryan (my supervisor) was not amused.  Luckily for me the weather got bad by midday, forcing everyone back to McMurdo for the afternoon, so at least I only missed a half day of work.

Condition 2: pretty windy!

Other boondoggles I've taken part in:

• Hanging out in the McMurdo "greenhouse"
  
  
• Getting Ivan The Terra-Bus to work (painfully slow ... excellent for having a nap)
  
  
• Playing MANY games of cards
• Eating too much, hanging around in the canteen to avoid boredom
• Taking photos of outhouses, just to give people an idea of the full Antarctic experience
  
  

Non-boondoggle exercises:

• Cabling up ANITA
• Going to the gym, TWICE!
• Not a whole lot else (still gets a bullet point though, makes me feel better)

Blogging in bullet point form, efficient and easy.  Blog done!

Oh, and my uncle is here!  He's in McMurdo for a few days before going up Erebus to get cold for a month.

Vertigo...

What a week since my last entry!  I've just got back from discovering a major vertigo issue - more on that later - and am sitting with legs still feeling tight from the nerves, though that could be partly due to the constricting feel of long underwear.  Luckily I'm being helped by an awesome view (see below) and a hot chocolate to calm down with, so get ready for a long post...

View across to the Royal Society Range (taken from Ob Hill)

To keep things in chronological order I'll start off with snow school, a.k.a. Happy Camper.  The whole experience was ace!  Even the sitting around in a classroom "learning" about issues of common sense, plus some pretty gruesome images of frostbite, wasn't so bad.

In my trench

After the dull class bit was over everyone was shipped out in a Delta to the ice shelf, only a couple of km from McMurdo and even close to Scott Base, but a great site for a camp.  We were lucky with pretty perfect weather and got stuck in to setting up tents, then building first a quinzy (a cross between and igloo and ice cave), a wind-breaking snow wall, and finally optional trenches to sleep in.  Or, in one guys case, an ill fated igloo which turned into mini Stonehenge at literally the 11th hour.

Stonehenge

During all this my record for personal disaster kept up good form.  First I lost my little red windbreaker jacket issued to me, panicked searches were carried out even as I had to be leaving for snow school.  I hadn't even worn the damn thing and they're bloody expensive!  Then, on the way out to the ice I managed to misplace a mitt liner.  Not a big loss until your fingers are too cold for gloves and you have to spend another 10 hours outside worrying about frostbite (chemical hand-warmers are my savior).  Finally, as I was quarrying blocks of ice for the snow wall I realised I'd lost a side sun-protector from my new glasses.  Fuck!  Although I had two days of niggling worries about where all this stuff was, I can tell you now that I left the jacket in Christchurch, the sunglasses side protector may or may not be replaceable, but isn't totally necessary and would make me look like a tool in any non-icy situation.  The mitt liner is still unaccounted for, but I'm pretty sure I'll get it back from a lost and found.  Who cares anyway, I'm just chuffed I found the jacket!

So after working out how to keep my hands warm without mitts, my eyes protected sans side protectors and my body warm without the windbreaker (easy really, Big Red was far more useful anyway, and I had a North Face jacket of my own), I went to bed.  And got cold.  I was fine for most of the night, with Big Red and two roll mats under my warm sleeping bag.  Only I fell asleep before I could be bothered to locate a little string that tightens the sleeping bag over the shoulders (in addition to the usual head one).  Result of this?  I wake up at 4 in the morning with freezing shoulders and give myself a sharp kick for being such an idiot.  Other than that, the night in the trench was awesome, if a little big of a struggle to get dressed in the next morning.

Hmm, it appears I'm still having issues with photo uploads, but anyway....

ANITA goes in the EMI tent

After a couple of relatively quiet days following the snow school (there seriously isn't much to do here), I decided to go to a prom night that had been organised at the Berg Field Centre (the gear issue centre for field camps).  Can't remember much of the night now, but I did manage to make it into work on Sunday.  This was a bad idea.  I got nothing done, not even sleep.

Ob Hill looking innocent

Then today, Monday, I decided to climb Ob Hill, which overlooks both McMurdo and Scott Base.  The views up there are incredible but the structural stability of the paths are not.  Having walked up the lower section of the path, I reach the icier, steeper section in good spirits.  The climb is only a km or so, but is pretty steep so takes a while.  For me it takes ages, I end up on my hands and knees for much of it, and even though I know the ice is not compacted much, making it halfway between ice and snow and perfectly easy to walk on for much of the route, my mind cannot get over the fact it was ice.  So I scramble up the non-icy sections, which are covered in small gravel, very loosely packed and totally shit for walking on.

Finally getting to the top, with many muttered fucks and shits and what the hell am I doing, why don't I just bloody stand ups, I meet a guy who is calm as you like.  "I saw you earlier on" he says cheerfully, "you took a bit longer than I expected".  Yes.  I fucking did.  I was being a fucking pussy.

Vertigo anyone?  McMurdo from Ob Hill

Any hopes that I might be able to head back down with him, providing both confidence and safety, quickly fade as he says his goodbyes after only a few seconds and tells me to enjoy the view.  Looking down about 5 minutes later I see he's already got a third of the way down, even though the hill must have at least a 20 degree incline and is slippery as hell.  So getting out my camera I decide to try and calm down.

Getting back down is now a bit of a blur.  Many more profanities were muttered, it is definitely harder hiking down that up.  But halfway towards the bottom I realised that I was being a twat and that walking would be much easier than my preferred mode of crab position scrambling.  After a few false starts, I finally made the last 20 metres of the hard section of the hike walking bipedal, like a human, only with stiff legs from all the prior panicking.

Now, pleased that I made it, but with a cloud of shame for being such a tit about it all, I'm still calming down.

I'm going to climb the bastard again though.

Heading out ...

Shitty blogs and their shitty inability accept image uploads.  Then the shitty image placement/movement options.  It’s very frustrating, I may have to put photos on facebook or Flickr instead…

Venting over (for now at least), on to more pleasing matters.  ANITA is being pieced together nice and quickly, though the small parts of the test data I’m supposed to be analysing are causing a few headaches.  I’m getting the complete Antarctic experience and will be heading out today onto the ice sheet for a day of snow school followed by a night in a tent, I even get altitude training.  And finally, Hereford are no longer propping up League 1 (US spellcheckers claim ‘Hereford is no longer propping up League 1’, which brings up an issue I’d like resolved; should a football team be referred to as a singular?   It sounds wrong to me, ESPN coverage of sport - ‘sports’, they’re probably right on that one - pisses me off).

The snow school thing is quite cool.  I’m doing it so I can be backup for trips out to Taylor Dome and WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet).  3 other ANITA members will be making the trip out to both sites to set up pulsing antennas that ANITA will be able to see.

Delta

I’ve managed to get off base finally for a trip too, riding in a Delta out to some ice caves.  So now I can say I’ve been in a crevasse, only I went in from the side not the top.  Hopefully pictures will be up of that soon… (they now are!)

Erebus(?) with a fair amount of wind

Nothing else to say really, other than weight loss efforts have faltered after my grand start with the football.  But I’m determined not to have to cook for Jo any more than I would normally (not out of meanness, I look after my girlfriend, rather annoyance at my lack of fitness and my vanity).

Arrived!

I made it to Antarctica!!!  Turns out it’s not THAT cold.

Flying in style and comfort on a C17

Actually, I’ve been here since Friday (so 4 days), but have been pretty busy, this and the lack of a laptop have prevented me from making an entry until now.  In fact, while the internet services are surprisingly good given the location, I’m having to write this in my room, then wait till I get to work before I’m able to post it.

McMurdo dorms

What’s McMurdo and Antarctica actually like?  For starters, the town (if you can call it that) is on a rocky island, one of the few down here, called Ross Island.   It’s a bit like a mining/drilling settlement in looks – like the pictures you see of communities in northern Alaska and Canada.  The views over the ice sheet are stunning though; my photography skills are not doing them any justice.  Even better for these views though is where I’m working.  The long duration balloon sight is out at one of the airfields on the Ross Ice Sheet called Williams Field.  From it we can see Mount Erebus, which is on Ross Island about 20km from McMurdo and Willy Field., as well as other islands – White and Black Islands being the closest.

Frisbee at work, Erebus in background

Mostly over the last few days I’ve been going to briefings and settling in.  But I have also managed some work – mainly cabling of the instrument, preparing the surfaces of random RF stuff … not the most exciting, but fine to be getting on with.  Other than that, I’ve been embarrassed by Americans when playing 4 a side football, not only am I shit but also horrendously unfit.  Tomorrow (or today … time differences, writing night before posting … gargh) I’m going on a trip to ice caves.  Exciting.  Though no idea what it’ll be like.

What ANITA looks like right now

More photos will come soon; they’re clearly much more interesting than the blog, I just haven’t taken too many yet.  Get ready for a load of photos of people in sunglasses and Big Reds (the huge parka) and fun physicsy instrument photos.  Bet you can hardly wait!  No penguins though.  None.  Bastards are too small for me to see when I don’t have my glasses on, which is always when outside.  I don’t want be sunblinded for the sake of a bird that cant even fly and turns out to be way smaller than I always thought they were.  If I do see one up close then obviously my opinion will change. (Best.  Birds.  Ever.  I’m sure.)

Edit .... no photos as yet - the upload is too hefty for the server here.

Edit edit ... photos now!

Hello. Welcome to my blog. Thanks for reading my first post. I've started this blog to let people know about what I'm doing in Antarctica without sending mass emails - which I regularly delete when others send them to me but then feel guilty that I haven't taken an interest in their lives. I guess there's actually very little difference between this and the mass email, but it appeals to me more.

Ramble.

Having spoken to a couple of people who write/wrote/considered writing a blog, I've realised it can be tough talking about your life or opinions over an extended period of time without boring people to death and sounding massively self-indulgent. I bore people and am pretty self absorbed anyway though. This could be a bad thing. Oh well.

On with the blog.

I'm currently a PhD student at UCL working on ANITA (ANtarctic Transient Antenna - worse acronyms are out there, trust me). ANITA is an ultra high energy neutrino detector, it is balloon borne and will

circle the Antarctic continent for around a month, carried by seasonal winds. Basically it uses an array of horn antennas to detect radio emission from the Antarctic ice. When a UHE neutrino enters the ice it could interact and cause a cascade of particles. The idea is that these will emit strongly enough in radio frequencies. It is these very short (nanosecond) pulses that

ANITA will hopefully find.

Right now I'm in Christchurch, New Zealand. I've just been for my cold weather clothing issue, much fun pulling on and off thermal stuff, and have also had a flu shot which made me bleed. There really isn't much to write about the trip yet though, I haven't had much time to look around, only to buy some rather posh whisky (to keep me going out there when all I can get in the way of alcohol is piss beer) and some relatively OK prices Oakleys ... backup sunglasses indeed.

Now my computer is running low on battery and I don't have an adapter. Shit. So I guess I'll write again soon!