South Pole
Diary January 24th, 4am
From
Michael Burton.....
Its
a few days since my last report, though its with the greatest
difficulty that I remember its 3 days ago, and that I've been
here 5. The `days' have merged into a blur. However progress
has been made!
I
tried calling my parents on Sunday night - there are 4 hours
each week when we are allowed to use the satellite to make
private calls. However the satellite refused to cooperate
with me, and though I once managed to reach the operator in
Florida I never got any further. In fact communication seems
to have been harder this time than 2 years ago - I have also
been having trouble getting email out for a variety of unrelated
reasons which seem to indicate that gremlins may indeed inhabit
the Pole!
 Craig
must have set new records in Polar efficiency. His experiment
was up and running within a day of my getting here, and is
getting glorious data. The mid-IR sky is simply fantastic
when its clear - and certainly far more stable than we were
anticipating. Craig, of course, will be patient while he analyses
the results before reporting them, but my gut feeling is that
mid-IR work in the summer months is a real possibility for
future science experiments.
The
IRPS, on the other hand, has been causing us no end of trouble.
Fixing it is a job well beyond my meagre electronic capabilities,
but fortunately both Craig and Jamie (last year's SPIREX winterover,
and of course our IRPS honours student of 93!) were up to
the task. Having untangled the seemingly countless cables
connecting the multitudinous parts of the experiment that
Michael Ashley has now created and fitting them all together,
I managed to cool the dewar down and start testing it out.
First the motors worked, but no signal could be seen. After
tracing this to a blown fuse, we then found we could see signal
but no longer move the motors. Another blown fuse! Then the
motors worked but the signal failed, and back and forth a
couple more times. The trouble was that various connectors
at the back of the computer had suffered in transporting the
computer to Australia and back after the last season, and
every time one was fixed another would be knocked out of place.
The final fix came after use of the infamous LeCroy 9314L
oscilloscope, star of an entire issue of Michael Ashley's
diary of last year. Howling, the IRPS finally revealed all
of its hidden secrets - I think we had been measuring the
signal from the slow discharge of a capacitor!!
However
the IRPS appears to be working now, as long as we all try
not to breath on it, and I have pumped it down to its operating
temperature and am getting ready for some calibration measurements,
before trying out the Mark II automatic liquid nitrogen filling
system, which Jack Cochrane laboured so tremendously over
Christmas to have ready for me. But first I have had to clear
up my 2 square metres of space as the adjoining 1.5 square
metres are due to be occupied tomorrow by another experimenter!
 After
4 days of pure sunshine the weather changed, and the past
24 hours we have been covered in low cloud, with limited visibility.
Craig didn't think too much of my suggestion that this would
make for perfect calibration by just assuming an optically
thick black body at the ambient temperature! Actually attentitive
readers may have noticed that I've failed to inform of the
local temperatures. The main reason is because the base computer,
which is supposed to continually log such information for
public dissemination, seems to think every weather statistic
is zero this year! However its been pretty warm so far, with
the temperature hovering around the -30 mark. We really need
it a little colder for Craig's experiment to reach its best!
My
skiing has picked up, and I only fell over once yesterday
entering the dome down the ice-covered ramp to its entrance.
However I've also chickened out a couple of times and taken
SPART, the South Pole Area Rapid Transport (a name not too
dissimilar to the public transportation system in the Bay
Area of California, and probably just as rapid!), to the CARA
site instead.
And
finally I think I am becoming accustomed to the altitude as
I slept for 10 hours last night and woke up feeling great.
However the end result is that I am now well and truly on
a night schedule, and will be heading over to breakfast soon
before retiring to bed!
Michael
Burton
 
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