Tuesday
15th January
From
John Storey.....
 Woke
up Tuesday morning amazed to be here, as always. We (Tony,
Duane and I) unpacked the rest of the boxes, convinced each
other that all kinds of things were missing, and started making
long and pointless lists of things that we eventually found.
Have I introduced Tony yet? Tony Travouillon is a UNSW PhD
student whose thesis work will mainly concern the SODAR (acoustic
sounder). However Tony is amazingly useful at all kinds of
things, and has been at South Pole since the New Year. Tony
also speaks French, which is bound to come in handy sooner
or later.
Next
we scoped out the AASTO and tried to work out how to fit the
Stirling engine and its various accessories into an already
overcrowded space. At various times the bench, the cupboards,
the bunks and ANU's video monitors were all under threat -
especially from Tony who had the advantage over us of being
already acclimatised to the altitude. I think Tony has spent
the past week eyeing off the AASTO fixtures with a view to
demolition. Duane got into the mood too, and at one stage
almost had to be forcibly restrained from heading out to get
a chain saw. In the end we figured out exactly where everything
could go - the Stirling engine in front of the bench (so you
can't miss it when you walk in the door), the dump tank behind
it, the batteries under the bench, the heaters in front of
the ANU rack, the header tank on the bench in the right-hand
corner, and the control panel where the right hand half of
the bookshelves are. The only demolition required will be
of half the bookshelves - and frankly we don't do much reading
in the AASTO anyway.
That
was about enough thinking to go on with, so we repaired to
lunch. It's about 1 km from the AASTO back to the dome where
the galley is. The walk is quite heavy going at first, but
good for the appetite. However after lunch Duane was looking
a bit green and feeling decidedly queasy, so we packed him
off to Tim the station doctor, who measured the amount of
oxygen in his blood. This turned out to be not very much,
so Tim popped some Diamox into him, put him on oxygen for
an hour, and sent him off to bed. By the end of the afternoon
Duane was looking as right as rain, and we think he'll live.
 Tony
spent part of the afternoon removing the old exhaust pipe
from the AASTO - a major task because of the way it was bolted
and then glued to the roof. The old exhaust pipe was an amazingly
complicated freon-heated coaxial tube assembly. The new one
will be a simple piece of car exhaust bent up at Tuffy Mufflers
just before we came away. Despite Tony's best efforts we ended
up with fibreglass everywhere - this being yet another component
of the old exhaust system. To complete this orgy of destruction,
I sawed up the bookshelves.
After
dinner a couple of cargoids (cargo people) arrived out at
the AASTO with a Skidoo towing a sled with a big box on it.
This turned out to be the batteries for our Stirling engine
- four big sealed lead-acid batteries each about half as big
again as a car battery. Because they are considered "dangerous",
such batteries are packed into a box filled with zeolite or
vermiculite or another of those absorbent minerals you grow
hydroponic vegies in or sit the cat on. Even with the gracious
assistance of the cargoids we ended up with zeolite all over
the AASTO carpet, already looking rather shabby on account
of the fibreglass. Tomorrow we will get the industrial strength
vacuum cleaner from the MAPO building, and the AASTO will
be as good as new again.
Not
much else happened - Duane and I tried to take things quietly
while we got acclimatised. I sorted out my South Pole computer
account; the very fact that you are receiving this means I
have acquired at least some rudimentary skills in Microsoft
Outlook. I think I have at last persuaded the stupid thing
to send messages in plain text instead of RTF, Word or HTML
format; though the computer and I are still having an ongoing
discussion about the finer points of what might reasonably
be possible with a
rationally designed email program.
Meanwhile
the weather has started to clear a little, with the sun poking
through occasionally and producing some dazzling ice halos.
The
only other item of note is that the coffee machine, which
has been at South Pole for as long as I have been coming here,
finally gave up the ghost today. This is very bad news - it
used to be possible to get quite decent coffee out of it by
filling the filter to double strength when no-one was looking.
The new machine is digitally controlled with touch-pad switches
and might not be as easy to lead astray. We shall see.
John
 
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