Monday 28th
January
From
John Storey.....
Last
morning at the South Pole!
The
first part of the morning was taken up with logistics - packing
up the equipment that will not be needed over winter, putting
out my hold luggage in the snow for collection by the cargoids,
making sure all my ECW gear was in my hand-carry, and so on.
At 9 am there was "redeployment briefing", which
sounds terribly formal but in fact was just an opportunity
for the station management to say what a great job we'd all
done and to hand out handsome personalised certificates, together
with a shoulder patch which says - for reasons I haven't yet
got to the bottom of - "South Pole Medical Facility".
I
also had to rush around giving back all the stuff we'd borrowed
- well most of it. The replacement Supervisor computer (late
of keyboard woes) was now in such a sorry state I was too
embarrassed to return it, and was last seen in the Construction
Debris bin with a pile of snow on it to make it less obvious.
The Ethernet hub with the terribly noisy fan was clearly so
noisy that no-one would want it back, so it's still in the
AASTO. I think Tony signed out for both these items. They'll
be after you, Tony...
That
left just two hours to do a final check of the equipment and
write some last minute notes to Mike Whitehead and Wilfred,
who will look after the AASTO and its instruments through
the winter. There was one essential aspect to running the
equipment remotely that we hadn't yet properly checked - would
it be possible to wake-up the instruments via commands over
the Internet?
We
make provision for this with a piece of electronics aptly
named the "wakey-wakey" board. It just sits there
listening for any attempt to communicate with the instrument
and, when this occurs, shakes it into life. (It also wakes
the instrument up every couple of hours anyway, just to keep
it on its toes.) What I quickly discovered was that, yes,
we could wake Summit up remotely, but that it promptly went
back to sleep again 60 seconds later. Clearly this was an
instrument that, if it had the choice, would buy an alarm
clock with a "snooze" facility.
What
I had hoped would be a routine confirmation that everything
was OK was quickly assuming the proportions of a major drama.
An instrument that won't work for more than 60 seconds at
a time is worse than useless. At 11:00 am the incoming Hercules
would be approaching, and the flashing beacon would prevent
anyone crossing the ski-way. It was now 10:15, and I needed
to leave at least 15 minutes to get back to the Dome. At 10:30
I discovered, after a frantic search, that we did not have
a spare wakey-wakey board. Five minutes later I confirmed
a growing suspicion that we didn't have the necessary parts
to fix the old one, either. I turned the soldering iron on
to give it time to warm up, though what I was going to solder
was not at all clear. Finally, with just a few minutes to
go and circuit diagrams spread across the floor of the AASTO,
I decided it was better to have the instrument running all
the time than not at all - and hot-wired the power supply
appropriately. The soldering iron was still cooling down as
I rushed for the plane.
I
was last on - not a bad position to be in because a) you're
first off at the other end, and b) you get one of the very
few windows to look out of. (The fact that the window is behind
your head normally wouldn't matter, but in ECW gear you turn
your head around and all you see is the inside of your parka
hood.) I did manage to overcome this little obstacle, however,
and my final view of South Pole was of the AASTO, with a cheerful
puff of white clouds rising from its exhaust stack.
 The
flight to McMurdo was uneventful. McMurdo itself is always
something of a disappointment after the Pole. For one thing,
it's dirty. That's not really McMurdo's fault - it's built
on dirt; in fact old volcanic ash from Mt Erebus. Dirt without
vegetation is unattractive. South Pole is sitting on nearly
3000 metres of the purest ice on the planet. So, by comparison,
McMurdo is drab. It's not nearly as white as the South Pole,
either. McMurdo is also frustrating because you can no longer
work on the equipment, but neither are you yet reunited with
your family. It's a sort of Antarctic limbo.
To
cheer me up they have promised to fly us to Christchurch tomorrow
night in a C-141 Starlifter. This four engine jet is a lot
faster than the Hercules (it can do the trip in 5 hours) and
has a proper toilet with a door on it.
 
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