South Pole
Diary February 5th, 5am
From
Michael Burton.....
Fog,
that's the story of today! Its the worst I've ever seen here.
Another weather change and the wind, instead of blowing down
from Dome Argus, is now coming from the South (grid South!)
- probably from Oz for all I know. Anyway its brought more
moist, warm air with it and thick fog. It reached -20 at one
point! Visibility is down to about 50m - and I certainly cant
see the dome from the astronomy sector. Its bringing a frosting
to everything too - being laden with moisture (or relatively
so) water seems to be condensing out of the air onto every
object it can find. I've had to make heavy use of a heat gun
to clean away the snow and frost from anything I'm working
on, otherwise all my connections would have become embedded
in ice!
 Indeed
the weather was sufficiently poor that one plane aborted its
journey having reached Pole and headed back to Mactown! I
was skiing to work at about 8pm yesterday, a route which crosses
the ice runway, barely able to see the next flag pole in front
of me. Then I noticed the warning lights come on warning that
a plane was approaching. After waiting around a bit I heard
a dull roar, which got closer and closer until I thought something
was going to land right on top of me! However the noise passed
overhead, or at least I presume it did, because I never saw
anything, even though the plane was probably no more than
50 m above my head. I could hear the plane turn around, and
10 minutes later the same performance happened - a near landing
but nothing seen! The pilot gave up at that point and headed
back to McMurdo, and I was finally able to cross the runway
and head to shelter!
A
couple of hours later another plane arrived (its a busy time
at Pole right now - we expect 5 flights tomorrow!). The visibility
had cleared to 100m and it managed to land. When it took off
an hour and a half later I could barely see it, though the
runway is only 100m from our building, and it was going in
the wrong direction! I have never seen a plane take off to
the south here - the wind's is always blowing from the other
direction!
Its
been a tiring last couple of days, but finally I see the end
in sight. When I last wrote I could see disaster ahead - there
were half a dozen problems to hand to which I couldn't see
the solution. Thankfully they are now past, though another
potential disaster came and went in the last few hours.
It
all started when I managed to destroy that storage dewar,
though fortunately another was found (and even the spare from
McMurdo has now arrived). In fact I underestimated when I
said the Americans always had six of everything, they have
sixty-six of them! Apparently at McMurdo they have scores
of these dewars and are looking for an excuse to get rid of
them, because there is some newer, fancier better dewar now
available! My second set of problems came when I installed
the automatic nitrogen filling system, and found that only
gaseous nitrogen would come out the end, no liquid! After
taking everything apart it turned out that a new component
we'd added this year, a sieve to keep our tubes clean, was
reducing the pressure sufficiently that the nitrogen was all
evaporating before it could reach the end of my fill tube!
But in the process of doing this I must have climbed the stairs
to the roof of the MAPO building 100 times. I had to set commands
running on the computer, then run outside to see what they
were doing, then disassemble bits and repeat the process,
and finally put everything together. There is only so long
you can work outside with fiddly bits before you need to run
into the warm to recover, and add about 10 trips to fill my
dewar with nitrogen, plus all those times I forgot some vital
tool, I think I got my exercise in, as well as seeming to
have spent half the day outside!
To
more mundane matters. The weekend has just past and we had
that good old American favourite, pizza, for Saturday dinner.
Apparently a South Pole tradition. My skiing advanced to the
point where I braved the super-direct descent down the mogul-covered
ice ramp into the dome (ie skis straight ahead, no turning
or braking), and survived! And I discovered a problem with
the high-tech running machine in the exercise room - you cant
set it to go faster than 10mph!
Rumour
has it that the AASTO is due to arrive tomorrow, if the fog
clears up.....
Michael
Burton
 
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