I think this is the last diary entry I'll make this year. I don't think I'll be able to write much more. No, I haven't gone sentimental. It's just that the sea is rocking hard and it's almost impossible to concentrate in front of a computer screen. Let's just say that I strongly regret the conditions we had on our way to DDU. This time, although we haven't met a storm yet, the weather is quite bad and 6 people have not left their bed since the departure. Jon and I are not sick (that's why they sent us: we are tough) but we are not happy campers either. We have two more days to go and I can tell you that so far, each day has been interminable. Also, instead of 15 passengers, we are now 40 on board. You can forget about sitting comfortably in the lounge. The place is packed and that's another reason to spend most of the day lying in bed. Nothing exciting happens either. Someone saw a whale this morning but that's about the most amazing event since we left DDU. Personally I can't wait to be in Hobart to sleep and eat in a place that does not move. I also can't wait to be in Sydney to negotiate to go back to Dome C next year by plane. Now I should stop winging and finish this year's diary in a positive way. Jon called Sydney yesterday and the AASTINO is working like a charm. The first photos of Dome Concordia "post-summer" should now be on the web (there should be a link from this page). They prove that our mission has been a great success this year. I hope you'll all tune in next year for more science in the cold. See you next year...

It's been now almost 4 days in DDU. One thing is for sure, if I stay any longer I will become like a Roman emperor (of the decaying era, of course). I spent a lot of time here sleeping, eating and playing pool. To my defence, I had planned to do some work. After all, I have my laptop. I could have been writing papers and working on my data. Unfortunately, I could not do that because I had left all the power adaptors with Jon back in Dome C. All my batteries were drained and being the only Australia in DDU, my only chance was to wait another 24 hours for Jon to arrive. The morning Jon was due in DDU along with a large part of the Concordia builders, the DDU station manager realised that this horde of barbarians coming down from the plateau would not fit in the remaining dorms and so he decided to make them sleep on the Astrolabe. That was not a total surprise; we had done the same thing a month ago. So they would sleep on the boat at night and come back to the land during the day. The plane landed a bit after lunch. I was not surprised to see a very tired face when the helicopter dropped Jon in the station. We spent a bit of time talking about what he had done the past two days in Dome C (the content of his last diary entry). After dinner he and the other guys were taken to the boat only to come back the following morning. Knowing his lack of sleep, I was counting on him to come back to the base rather in the afternoon than in the morning. So when I got up (I won't tell you what time...), all the Dome C storm-troopers where here, armed with their cameras and looking forward to the couple of days of relaxing time in DDU before flying home. Jon was still on the boat, fair enough, making up for the last two difficult days in Dome C. Through the afternoon, however, the weather started to get bad. The blue sky I've had since my arrival was gone and the wind was becoming a lot stronger. In consequence, no one could go in or out of the Astrolabe. Jon was therefore stuck on the boat with the crew as the only company. Unfortunately for him, the weather remained like that for three days. I guess he didn't miss much since we all stayed inside the whole time. The wind was too strong to make a walk even remotely enjoyable. Still missing my power cord I was doomed to wait the day of departure to be able to write those lines. The rest of the Dome C team and I got plenty of time to compare the lifestyle of Dome C with Dumont D'Urville. Of course, there is the difference of size. Dome C peaked once at about 45 people when Dumont D'Urville easily reaches 60. The buildings of DDU are a lot older but much larger and more comfortable than the summer camp of Dome C. Being a winter base, the entertainment is well catered for. The island itself is great. I don't think it's possible to get sick of walking around it. The amount of changes it has gone through in a month is amazing. I could barely remember having walked through the same paths. The ice has melted a lot so all the places I remembered white were now rocky and muddy. I mentioned before the changes the penguins have gone through and they make a difference in the look of the landscape since there are some may of them. The place was all black and white before and now it is grey, white and brown essentially. The sea looks also different. With the temperature rising, a lot of the glacier has melted and the ocean is totally covered with icebergs. This adventure is almost over. We now have to face 6 days in the Astrolabe, let's hope they go quickly.

Where were we? That's right, a succession of events made us lose contact for quite a few days now. Last time you heard of us was from Jon alone in Dome C. We got separated after I left on the 5th as planned by the Dome C logistics. Between that time and Jon's last diary entry things happened rather fast and this is now the first time since that I have the chance a sign of life. On the evening of the 4th I was announced that my flight would leave the next morning at 4am. In other words, there was no point going to bed since I would have inevitably slept through my imaginary alarm otherwise. I packed everything and gave a last gaze inside the AASTINO, confident that Jon would easily eat away the few remaining issues. The SODAR was fully working, the engine made an acceptable noise and the inside temperature was probably the warmest of the whole station. The flight itself was quick and painless. We were only two passengers, myself and a French scientist from Grenoble. It would probably have been more comfortable if we didn't have 800kg of boxes lying around the plane. The conditions inside the plane were probably comparable to the ones at the beginning of Indiana Jones (except we didn't crash). I lost interest in the landscape outside my window after the first 10 minutes. The four hours of the flight were then inexistent. I was wakened up by the co-pilot just before landing. At our arrival the wind was blowing as you would expect it to on the coast of Antarctica. We got every single box out of Twin-Otter within 10 minutes. The helicopter came to take us to the base and that was definitely the most entertaining thing done in weeks. The pilot of DDU is known here for his speed. As soon as we got in, he lifted the helicopter right up and turned the machine around while backing toward the station (I guess you had to be there). We flew to the island a couple of meters above sea level, only rising to avoid the few icebergs along our path. I think I'd be happy to go back through DDU next year simply to enjoy another helicopter flight. In DDU, nothing had changed since our short stop on the way to Dome C. The main building containing all the sources of entertainment is still everybody's dream. It has a cinema room, a pool table, a baby-foot table and walls covered with books and comics. There are chocolates, cookies and candies laid out on the tables and even a whole ham waiting for you to carve it. I found Fabrice and Patrick, two Swiss EPICA scientists, who had left Dome C a couple of days before me. They were fully immersed in their comics; I had to make myself noticed to pull them out of their trance. It was only a couple of days later that I would realise I would be just as easily drawn by the same books. Like all the other Dome C people, I was given a shared room in the summer dorm. It's a good 10 minutes walk from the rest of the station but I would be dumb to turn down another opportunity to walk amongst thousands of penguins. A lot has changed about them by the way. A month ago the colony was populated by young parents living in nests accompanied by usually two eggs or two small babies never more than 10cm tall. This time, however, the situation was quite different. Most of the adults were gone and nests were replaced by nurseries. The baby, grouped and protected by some remaining adults, were now full size and only differentiable by their grey feathers that they were losing day by day. The older babies only had this layer of feathers on their heads such that any group of them looked like the Jackson 5 dressed in tuxedo. All of the youngs spent their time scratching themself trying to get rid of as much feathers as they could. With their quantity and with the strong wind, the air was always filled with feathers taken away to the sea or in the eyes of Australian tourists. One of the most amusing sights was when a baby penguin would run after one of the guarding adult to beg for some food. Looking bigger than the grown ups with their thinner fur, I can see why the adult would in fact run away from the baby. So imagine this picture of about 20 Michael Jacksons gathered together around a security of about 5 body guards in tuxedos focused on the outside threat and one of them running in circles inside the nursery, chased by one of the Jacksons (making the sound of a baby chicken). And it was the same show in every single nest. It must be tough being a penguin.

I am writing this diary from the astrolabe- it is currently moored by the island station Dumont D'ville. I arrived here yesterday afternoon after leaving Dome C yesterday morning. The door is now closed on the AASTINO: but it was not exactly under the circumstances I had anticipated. After a couple of hours sleep from the previous night - and an early breakfast I had spent all of Thursday in the AASTINO finishing of the muiltitude of small tasks left and keeping an eye on things. I also continued to work on the engine management script and on making sure the instruments were running and collecting data. I worked through "night" but ave to admit to simply staring out the window appreciating where i was for a lot of the time. The view of the empty white horizon that stretches out towards the South Pole is amazing. Particularly late at night when the sun is threatening to set. My plane was due at 6.30 am, so at 5.30 am when everything looked like it was behaving itself and there was only a few things left to do, i began to write the last days diary. This diary was descibing how well everything was working and that i was just about to "close the door". This was to be a very ceremonial and symbolic event, given the extra finality involved in sealing it with silicon and taping it closed with aluminium tape (to keep out the cold winter air). At 6 am, i logged onto the newtork via the iridium phone to send off the diary entry. There was one new message. "Hmmm...strange" i thought, it was from Michael Ashley. It said: "There's something wrong with the computer system, we need to fix this today, please ring me". A mild panic then ensued as i thought about how two years of work was about to implode just before kick-off and that Micahels "today" actually only meant "20 minutes". A quick phone-call to Michael confirmed that 20 minutes wouldn't do, so i raced across to the station (naturally my skiddo wouldn't start as it had been sitting out in the cold all night) and asked about the next flight. There was a Twin Otter scheduled at 10.30 am, this was the last flight to Dumont D'ville!! Okay back out to the AASTINO and the iridium satellite system decided to go cactus - calls only last a minute before dropping out and you can only understand half of what is being said. After about an hour, and 10 phone calls to Michael, the head of station Camillo, came out to the AASTINO. He suggested that if i couln't fix the problem, i could stay on till station close the next day, then fly to Terra Nova Bay - the Italian coastal station. He also described the logistical nightmare involved in getting me from Terra Nova to Sydney, that i may not make it to Dumont D'ville before the astrolabe left, could possibly get home via McMurdo and Christchurch but nobody could know when.There was also a slight possibility that i would have to work my way home (via Norway) on a Norwegian whaling vessel. It is typical of the help we have been getting here that despite this logistical nightmare, he was perfectly happy to accomodate me. "But, he said, "the Dumont D'ville flight is early - you have 10 minutes to decide, and half an hour till the flight leaves". Another 10 phone calls to Michael, some frantic keyboard hammering, and we seemed to have fixed (or at least diagnosed) the communications problem. Then the station radio starts screaming at me "Pedro, Pedro, where are you, the plane is leaving". So i had a last look around the AASTINO, throw everything in the back of a skidoo, slam the door closed, squirt a bit of silastic in the gaps, and race off to the plane. After which, i spend the 4 hour trip trying to remember what i forgot to do {Yes, John, the solar panels are ON: i think...}. Back on the astrolabe, i have just rung Michael who has fixed the computer problem, and reports that everything else is looking good. I really have no idea if the whole system will crash and burn tomorrow or last until next summer, but 1/300 th of the way there is a lot different to 0/300 th, so i think we are in with a good chance. The amazing adventure is not yet over for me: I will spend the next few days in Dumont D'ville, before another 5 or so days on the astrolobe. I can easily sum up those times now though. My time here will be spent sleeping, watching penguins, improving my newly acquired babyfoot skills, trying to beat Tony at pingpong, eating the excellent food (hopefully no more snails) and taking advantage of the free beer. The astrolabe voyage will be five days spent enjoying the extremely placid state brought on by the sea-sickness medication, followed by bouts of vomiting over the bough. Should be fun!! By Jon Lawrence

I awoke, as usual, feeling like I had just eaten a whole packet of sao biscuits and then brushed my teeth with sand. This is a common malady - known as Antarctic desert mouth, brought on by the extremely dry air, suffered mostly by those who drink too many double expressos and smoke too many cigarettes. As usual, i just missed breakfast (it finishes at 8 am sharp) so had to make do with a double expresso and a smoke. I then walked out to the AASTINO, and found myself alone. Tony left for Dumont D'ville on the 4am Twin Otter flight this morning. He has to forgive me for not getting up (or staying up) and sending him off - he made me eat a snail last night - so I think we are even. First thing this morning I sat down and wrote a list of everything I need to do in the last two days here. I stopped at about 34 things, some of them simple (like wash my sheets - which is compulsory before leaving) some of them not so simple (like install and debug Paolos' 17 pages of perl script to analyse the sub-milimetre tipper data). Its now 3 am and I have crossed off 5 things (which don't include either of the above). I still think I can get it all done, as long as I don't sleep tomorrow night, can find someone to wash my sheets, and don't install and debug Paolos' 17 pages of perl script to analyse the sub-milimetre tipper data. Half of the remaining tasks are software related - writing and debugging scripts that will remotely control (and log data from) the two instruments and the two Stirling engines. The engine control is a particularly interesting and difficult problem. We have to give the engines enough intelligence that they will run without any intervention (because the iridium satellite communications link is very slow and it would be impossible to solve engine problems in real time), and decide what to do if a problem arises (ie one of them stops, develops a fault, or needs its oxygen sensor recalibrated). The software also needs to be robust enough that is wont crash or tell the engines to do stupid things. Another week or so of testing the program would be ideal but then I would have to winter alone in the AASTINO, as the station closes on Saturday. Saverio, the station electrician (and saviour of the SODAR) tells me that there is actually enough food here for four people to survive until next summer. I am convinced that the food supply is nothing but boxes and boxes of canned mushrooms and snails, and so I think I'll make sure to finish working on the engine software tomorrow. Jon Lawrence

Let's see. Today I am writing yesterday's diary a bit later than usual and with my short attention span, I had to ask Jon: "What happened yesterday?" After 5 seconds of reflection, Jon gave me the summary of the day: "Frog legs, the party, midnight pasta" Now I will try to expand these concepts and for once try to avoid putting our readers to sleep with our usual work related problems or with details about Dallas switches. So let's follow Jon menu, starting with entrée: "The frog legs" For once the special meal was not for dinner but for lunch. This is because Jean-Louis takes Sunday evening to Monday evening off. Before lunch nothing too exciting happened. Jon was on the engines and I was on the resurrected SODAR as you can imagine. At 12:00 we got back to the summer camp. As usual, took off our shoes, walked in the restaurant. I checked the day's menu which is always posted at the entry. When I saw written "grenouille" I immediately turned to Jon and saw the most worried look on his face as he was staring at the hundreds of pairs of legs lying in the dish. It was however surprisingly easy to convince him to try some, mentioning that it taste exactly like chicken. They were cooked with garlic and parsley and I think he liked them. I can't wait to see him in front of a plate of snails (I hope there is some before we leave). In the afternoon, nothing too exciting or at least "heroic-sounding" event. We are still very focused on what we are doing. The time is running out and we still have a few crucial details to get working. Something worth mentioning however was the last weather balloon launch of the season. I might be gone on the 4th so I prefer to give myself tomorrow to pack the whole equipment. My colleagues in Nice (who are reading this diary with a lot of interest, right Karim?) will be glad to know that all the launches went well and that the data is on its way via the internet. Right! Now I have talked enough about work. Let's go back to the menu with the main course: "the party" The Sunday night party was this time courtesy of the two Swiss of the station, Patrick and Patrice. They are part of the Science team of EPICA and in fact, the last two remaining members left at this stage of the competition. They had planed their party well since they got some quality Whisky shipped on the traverse that left DDU a couple of weeks ago. They had the music ready in the free-time tent and even made some cocktails with pineapples and orange (fresh ones). As usual, most of the station showed up, even if some, with larger responsibilities could only make a short appearance. The baby-foot was, of course, extensively used (It's amazing how good you get after a few drinks) but most people just chatted about their life back home or about their previous Antarctic adventures. With smaller amount of people left, it feels like the bonds between us all are getting stronger and stronger. I am sad I won't be there when the station closes (the 8th). I seems confirmed on the other hand that Jon will be able to stay until the 7th to do further testing on the system. At midnight, we moved on to the dessert of the day: "midnight pasta". The cook was Fabrizio, one of EPICA's driller. The pasta cooked with a lot of spices was served to everyone still up (most of the station). It was quite popular since he had to go back and do more twice. We even found some Norwegian omelet left in the freezer. The meal went on until very late. Everybody was talking louder than their neighbor. It felt like one of those big Italian family meeting except I am not sure who the padrino of the station is. The day was a lot of fun and it makes me a bit sad to leave it so soon.

When someone dies, you call for the priest. When a SODAR dies, you call for the schematics. That's right we are not the type of people to give up so easily. Through the night, I got the schematics of the beast faxed to us by the manufacturer in France. In the morning my trusted multimetre and I probed the life-less body in the hope to find a sign of weakness. This weakness revealed itself in the form of power converter which was not converting anything and taking a huge amount of space on the electronics board. This was good news only if a replacement could be found in Terra Nova and easily shipped to Dome C. At lunch at I explained all that to Saverio, the station electrician who has been a wonderful ally so far. He was going to ring Terra ova to get to see if they had replacement parts and also check around his lab if there was anything useful lying around. In the mean time I started pulling the faulty component out of the board, an exercise that required a large pair of pliers and Jon's assistance to get the little ripper detached from the rest of the circuit. We then had to wait for the replacement to arrive before attending more surgery to the SODAR. So I went outside with my video camera to catch a few scenes since the last remaining days might be too busy to do so. Walking around the station to get a few shots of the main tents, I felt again the solitude of the place. The station population had gone down again that morning and will again tomorrow morning when the Twin-Otter takes the Americans Scientists down to Mc Murdo. The two advantages of having less people here are that, first of all, there is less snoring in the tent and secondly Jean-Louis can prepare more exotic dishes that he could not do before because of the lack of ingredients. Tonight for example we are having tartar steak and tomorrow, duck with orange sauce. In the mean time, Jon was working on the remote connection of our system with Sydney. He and Michael Ashley had been trying to get it going for a few days now but had a few problems that are too boring to list in this diary. At the end of the day, they finally succeeded and we will be able to spend the remaining days doing some tests to see if we can control everything from Sydney. At 5:00pm Saverio walked in the AASTINO with a replacement converter. We were wondering with Jon how he got a hold onto such an uncommon piece of equipment. He told us that he ripped it off the wind generator (which was not working, so who cares?). Of course it was a bit bigger than the original one so there was a lot of wiring and soldering to be done to get it in place. Now the SODAR looks a bit bigger than it used to be. The converter in place, we fired up the SODAR and we heard it singing with a little voice. This created a smile on our faces but we were not done yet. We plugged the oscilloscope and cranked the gain of the brain new car amplifier until we got the proper signal strength coming out of the antenna. Victory! It was all working. We could hardly believe it. That was probably the greatest moment we've experienced in Dome C. Two days ago, we thought the machine was dead and ready to be shipped back in Sydney, and now it was making a racket of a noise that can be heard from both the new station and the summer camp. The man of the hour is of course Saverio, who has deserved to be taken out to diner the next time he comes and visit Sydney. The day finished pretty well as you can see. And we hope that the remaining couple of days will be just as successful. I also negotiated with the station manager for one of us to stay until the 7th now. So it's likely that the fellowship of the AASTINO will be broken soon and then reunited in DDU to relax amongst the penguins. Ciao

It is with grief that I have to announce the death of our beloved Sodar. He will be remembered to all as a happy lad, always singing. His ashes will be buried in a suitcase tomorrow at 15:30 and taken to a better place. More seriously though, this is a real disappointment to us that this very important experience will be missing our first winter at Dome C. It turned out that more than the amplifier was damaged. It would be very hard to figure out exactly what else got damaged let alone receiving the components on the little time we have left. So now we have to concentrate on getting the rest of our mission fully working, something we are very confident about. Jon had a better day than me, doing a lot of progress on the second engine which is more reluctant than the first one. We got the rest of the fuel delivered in the afternoon. We now have the two tanks filled up to the top. The amount of fuel should be just enough until we come back at the end of the year. In fact, the amount of fuel we will use will be also dependant on the amount of energy we can get out of the solar panels. We installed them facing north in order to get every glimpse of sun as it will make a short appearance in spring and autumn. Today was also memorable for being the coldest yet. It was not so much the temperature but rather the wind which was at a record high. The 20 knots made all our flags stand straight. So straight they looked like the one on the moon which I guess is just as lonely as ours will be when the station closes. The wind made it difficult to do just about anything outside and it reminded me of the conditions we experienced last year at the South Pole. I should probably mention that the South Pole, being on the slope of the plateau, has stronger winds so we had to be fully covered when going outside. Dome C on the other hand is at a local maximum and the wind is usual negligible. Today, this was not the case and our clothes felt a little short on protection. Even our AASTINO which usually can get to any temperature we want (we like it at 28C) could barely maintain a temperature above 15C. The wind was infiltrating itself through our vents which were designed to minimise that effect. With 2,500 litres of cold fuel now inside the AASTINO, it should take a couple of days to get our 28C back and work around in shorts. I guess that's all for today. I don't fell like saying much because of the frustration. That is one thing about working in extreme environments. If something goes wrong, either you came prepared for it or there is simply nothing you can do. Now that all our readers feel sorry for us (and are on their way to make a donation to our cause), I'll finish with the good news of the day: we got one extra day in Dome C (we are leaving on the 5th instead of the 4th) to get the bambino running.

I woke up early today. In fact it was the first time I was able to catch breakfast. Normally I use the breakfast hour to sleep a bit longer but today I knew was going to be a good day. Jean-Louis rubbed his eyes not believing it was me making an appearance so soon. He normally sees me amongst the fist people at lunch but never for breakfast. He checked out my pulse: everything is surprisingly in order. In the morning Jon and I were trying to go ahead with our work, but it proved harder than expected because the people of the raid having the morning off, all decided to visit us at regular intervals through out the morning. They have spent the day before unloading their trucks with the help of some Concordia people. They had plenty of material to transfer to the construction site, mainly panels used to separate each floor into the different rooms. There was also a whole container of food which will stay frozen until next season. Most importantly, 10,000 litres of JetA1 were brought along out of which we will use 2,500 litres to run the Aastino during winter. So the morning felt a little like last Sunday. Every hour a person or two from the traverse would come in the Aastino and I would put on my car salesman hat to repeat over and over again the wonderful characteristics of our experiments. I think that my speech was getting shorter and shorter towards the end, and by the time the last guy came in, I just felt like saying: "There it is, have a look". Don't worry I didn't say that. Jon realising that my patience was diminishing filled in the blanks and so I think every person got given the full story. Amongst the ten or so raid people, were two very recognisable Australians. I am glad that I am not the only one dressed in yellow now. They are mechanics and have worked with the Australian Antarctic Division in the past. They both were wintering over last year in the coastal base of Casey so we had plenty of things to talk about when they came to see us. They were hired for the traverse because it is cheaper for the French polar institute to hire already "Antarctic trained" personnel than doing the training themselves In the afternoon, things got exiting because a Twin-Otter flew in carrying my long awaited amplifier. This gives me a chance to rescue my PhD thesis and make the season a lot more worthwhile for all the people involved in the project. This data is very important for many people in the world waiting to see if the turbulence of Dome C is well-behaved and therefore if the site has more real-estate value than the swamps in Florida. So I spent the afternoon adapting the new amplifier to the SODAR and I'll tune it tomorrow to collect the first data. It seems that all our technical problems are running away. There Aastino should be fully operational by the time we say goodbye to the station. To top it all up Jean-Louis prepared I believe was the best dinner yet. There was duck magret served with green pepper sauce and with an assortment of several type of mushroom. For dessert, a Norwegian omelette which is a frozen cake made of ice-cream sandwiched between sponge cakes and covered with meringue and finally flamed Grand-Marnier is poured on the whole thing. Needless to say I had several servings of each dish. The day finished with a bit of fun. Fabrice, a Swiss physicist working for Epica, and I had a game of Chess. It's good to drop baby-foot for once and find another source of entertainment. The game was very intense and finished with a draw after an hour of play. We took appointment tomorrow for another game. I have now all night to tune my strategy.

Late last night, Dome C lived one of the major events of the season. The last traverse (or raid as they call it) from Dumont D'urville arrived after 10 days spent driving on the ice. We were aware of their approach from the Aastino by the conversations the station had with them on the radio. The first message they emitted was the report that some of the traverse had mechanical problems and had to stop to repair 20km away from Concordia. Imagine how you must feel so close to a warm meal and shower and suddenly your engine stops. Being so close, some of the raid kept on driving and left the others to their problem. After another hour, the radio screamed: "I can see the camels!" The camels they were talking about are carved out of plywood and sticked at the entry of the station (if there is such a thing as an entry). I think they symbolise the similitude between the raid and a Touhareg caravan going through the Sahara. This meant that they were arriving. Jon and I dropped everything, ran out of the Aastino with the video camera and watched the first part of the raid driving in the base. There was two large snow trucks, each pulling about 4 containers worth of supplies and attached one after another making the whole procession look like an Australian road train. The first two containers were clearly the habitable ones. With doors and smoke coming out of them, they looked from the outside easily as comfortable as out tents. Driving the leading truck, I recognised Georges, the Doctor who fixed my skull on the Astrolabe. It was good to welcome him in Dome C. He even came with a present: a shirt I had forgotten just before taking the helicopter at DDU. After arriving with Astrolabe, he helped with the unloading of the Astrolabe and the loading of the traverse. We witness a bit of this work while we were at DDU. A helicopter goes back and forth between the station and the boat, picking up a box roughly every 3 minutes. It was simply unbelievable to see the ease at which the pilot made those manoeuvres. We didn't stay around to see the rest of the traverse arrive a couple of hours later. This morning however, the station, fattened with 10 extra people and a lot of trucks and containers, was busy like a bee hive to unload everything. At 10:32am, Jon decided it was time to use brute strength on the supervisor. He took the ribbon cable out of the guts of the beast and after hesitating between running over it with the skidoo and squeezing it with pliers, he chose the later option. Like a surgeon, he then placed the tortured cable back in place and switched the power on. Having lost all confidence by that stage, we barely looked at the monitor when the miracle happened. The computer started normally and gave us the usual prompt as if nothing has happened. Time for Champagne! Unfortunately none of it was left from Sunday so we celebrated with the packet of biscuits I steal every day from Jean-Louis' reserve. This misadventure did cost us 4 days of work. We are now left with 6 days to complete the mission. This should be just enough to get the Aastino fully operational. The only uncertainty is the Sodar. I am still waiting for the amplifier from Mc Murdo to fix it. According to the station manager there is only one flight left out of Mc Murdo to Terra Nova on the 1st of February.

Today is Sunday the 26th of January. Our overseas readers may not be aware that it is the Australian National day. For this reason, we had organised a couple of special things for today. I'll pass very quickly over this morning. Jon and I spent it again trying to figure out what could be wrong with our compact flash. We did enough test to be now sure that this is not a software problem and that the card itself is in perfect shape. This is puzzling us a bit since the rest of the system works with another card. It's probably time to call the exorcist again. Lunch is when it started to become a bit more out of the ordinary. A week before I had explained Jean-Louis about Australia day. I asked him if it was possible to get something special for lunch (he has Sunday dinner off). So back then he asked me what a typical Australian meal was. I obviously mentioned kangaroo steak, although it is not all that popular in Australia, and it turned out that Jean-Louis had some (as you would if you were in the middle of Antarctica). I turned to Jon for the rest of the menu. Jon proposed sausage sandwich, an answer Jean-Louis pretended he didn't hear, and sponge cake. When I translated to Jean-Louis what it was, he kept on asking me "but what else do they put in it?". I thought he was going to faint when I repeated for the third time that it was nothing but sponge and icing. In the end he asked us to leave it to him and we are quite glad we did. Here is the menu: Tasmanian smoked salmon. Sydney's little Italy, tortelini. Kangaroo steak. Chocolate and cornflakes sponge cake. We even had taken the Australia flag from the AASTINO and put it on the ceiling of the restaurant. Our only failure was to be unable to answer what event triggered the choice of that date for the national day. For the afternoon, we had planned an open day in the AASTINO. Sunday being the only day off for the workers of the Concordia station, we had advertised a week in advance that this Sunday would be the day to come and visit us, with Champagne as an extra motivation. The AASTINO being a bit small to fit the whole station, we had spread the visit over a major part of the afternoon hoping that people would not come all at once. We also cleaned the tent up and layed out a table inside with Champagne, summary sheets of all the instruments and technical parts of the AASTINO and our "Physics school annual report" that we are so proud of. The visit was extremely successfull and most of the people of the station came (I have the names of the ones who didn't!). The Italians came first. Very civilised people, they came is small groups of two or three. I was serving the Champagne while Jon was giving out the details of the AASTINO with the energy of a car salesman. After the first hour, more and more came in the AASTINO and it became so busy that Jon and I were giving parralel talks on our system, completely forgetting the tent. Logically enough, the Concordia people were more interested by the engines and our strategy for the winter while the scientists spent more time gazing at the two instruments. By the time the American scientists came in, the AASTINO was completely full and I was regretting that we didn't ask for an entry fee. I think everyone was fairly impressed by our work and even completely baffled when they heard that no one in our team was a mechanical or electrical engineer. Eventually the AASTINO emptied and we were left only amongst English speakers. When we got out of the AASTINO, the tent which we had completely forgotten about, was making a lot of noise and even shaking a little. I opened it and found 16 people inside going through the Champagne as if it was orange juice. It was quite a view since the tent is made to fit between 4 and 6 people. After the tour of the AASTINO people had simply gathered there and had no reason to get out until there was no Champagne left to drink. Since we had 12 bottles, it took until 7:30pm to clear everyone out. What started as a tour, became a real social gathering. Everybody told their Antarctic story and it was probably one of the most fun time we have had so far. It's a shame John left so early because it was today that the AASTINO became a real part of the station. A smaller group kept on toasting to the AASTINO and Australia day after dinner, although Gianpiero prefered to sing: "To baigno day!". With our new spirit up tomorrow should see our victory over the supervisor. Ciao Tony

I woke up this morning, hoping that the previous day was just a bad dream. I rose out of my tent and the first thing I saw was the station doctor tanning outside his tent only wearing boxer-shorts and sun glasses. Ok I dreamt the whole Antarctic thing; I must be still in Tahiti. This idea didn't last long, it was still -30C and when I joined Jon in the AASTINO, the supervisor was still not working. This is not coming at a great timing either as I had organised today to launch a weather balloon every two hours between midday and midnight. Let's not panic! First thing, let's call Michael. We've called him every weekend since we have arrived at Dome C, he is probably wandering how small our brains got with the altitude. Nevertheless, we decide to call him. He leads me for half an hour through a series a linux command into a fight with the SODAR laptop to find out why it won't start up. Eventually the fight comes to an end: Michael 1- Computer 0. Jon on the other side of the AASTINO is waging another day of war against the Supervisor. He only stops to answer another wrong number on the Iridium. It was the same guy as yesterday, who we know now is trying to reach someone in Mc Murdo (close enough). At the end of the day however, the compact flash memory card is still not working. We have on the other end, another flash card which works. It is not ideal because it does not contain all the programs that the original did, but if worst comes, we can work something out from it. I spent my days doing the balloon launches, helped by Brad, a South Pole meteorologist I had seen there the previous year. He is at Dome C to work on some satellite validation which also benefits from the balloon data. We launched our first sonde at midday when the temperature was a comfortable -26C. But every other launch after that became harder and harder as the temperature dropped regularly and reached -41C on the midnight launch. At this temperature, tying the knot to the balloon is very painful to the fingers and sometime you can barely do one before needing to get your hand back in the gloves. Between launches I went back to the AASTINO to help Jon on the problem of the day. Every time I passed the door wishing to see the computer up and running. Unfortunately it never happened and the day finished with this problem still in the air. The evening was a typical Dome C Saturday night: A few people on the baby-foot (the competition was won by Gianpiero and Fabricio by the way), 5 French men playing Tarot and the same amount of Italian playing another game of card. The rest of the people are usually spread around a movie or simply talking around the fire place (ok, there is no fire place. I just meant heater.) The evening being the last for half of the Epica crew, the evening dragged on for a bit longer. At midnight, a bunch of Italians went to the kitchen to prepare some "midnight pasta". The French replied by an even more predictable "5am French fries". It's a shame Jon and I were not around at that time because we would have probably answered to that with a "6am meat pie" A domani...

Well, when we thought that everything was going as planned, the gods of computing decided that going to Antarctica and not sweating anymore than that was not acceptable. So they stroke a couple of time and now the pressure is up. The day went a bit like that: All was well in a pleasant morning at Dome C. The wind was low and the birds would have been singing if there had been any. Jon was happily working on the oxygen sensor whistling to the tune of the CD player. Tony was outside, the temperature was so nice that he didn't even have his jacket on. He was joyly shovelling snow, dreaming about the apple donuts awaiting to be eaten at dinner. Late morning he walked back inside and was greeted by Jon smiling, resetting the computer and saying: "the oxygen sensor program is almost working!"... And then... the shock. The computer screen, black, with four satanic letters: "GRUB", probably a curse word in the holy tongue of the computing gods. Well organised, we had brought with us a dictionary to this forgotten tongue: "Red-Hat for system managers". This book, so thick it takes two people to lift it, is supposed to tell you how to use the operating system. After kneeling in front of it, I turned the pages while Jon was singing incantations to calm the fury of the gods. The translation to GRUB revealed itself in all its modesty: "GRand Unified Bootloader". This translation was followed by a few descriptive lines as useful to us as a touristic guide to South-East India. So what do you do when a computer does not boot? You change religion...eh... I mean you change the disk. So we tried our back up disk. But it was not more successful, so we called our exorcist (Michael) to tell us how to get rid of this demon. Amongst the possible fixes he suggested was to try to read the compact flash disk on the SODAR laptop. I tried once, failed and when I was about to give it a second shot, the SODAR laptop refused to boot, claiming a file was missing. The curse had managed to invade our entire fleet of Unix machines (maybe fleet is exaggerated). A the top of our despair, the Iridium rang. And would you believe it, it was a wrong number! How can you get a wrong number when there is so few Iridium phones and when the number to dial is so long (12 figures). So we left the AASTINO, back to the base, and drowned our sadness in apple donuts. Tomorrow it will all seem like a bad dream...

Well, when we thought that everything was going as planned, the gods of computing decided that going to Antarctica and not sweating anymore than that was not acceptable. So they stroke a couple of time and now the pressure is up. The day went a bit like that: All was well in a pleasant morning at Dome C. The wind was low and the birds would have been singing if there had been any. Jon was happilly working on the oxygen sensor whisling to the tune of the CD player. Tony was outside, the temperature was so nice that he didn't even have his jacket on. He was joylly shovelling snow, dreaming about the apple donuts awaiting to be eaten at dinner. Late morning he walked back inside and was greeted by Jon smilling, resetting the computer and saying: "the oxygen sensor program is almost working!"... And then... the shock. The computer screen, black, with four satanic letters: "GRUB", probably a curse word in the holy tongue of the computing gods. Well organised, we had brought with us a dictionnay to this forgotten tongue: "Red-Hat for system managers". This book, so thick it takes two people to lift it, is supposed to tell you how to use the operating system. After kneeling in front of it, I turned the pages while Jon was singing incantations to calm the fury of the gods. The translation to GRUB revealed itself in all its modesty: "GRand Unified Bootloader". This translation was followed by a few descriptive lines as usefull to us as a touristic guide to South-East India. So what do you do when a computer does not boot? You change religion...eh... I mean you change the disk.

Today was a very quiet day at Dome C. Having reached a population minimum since we have arrived, and adding to that the total absence of wind, the main street of Dome C is reminiscent of an old western ghost town. From now on the population will slowly decrease until there is 5 people left on the 9th of February to close the station. Jon and I will be amongst the last scientists to leave with a date range from the 3rd to the 5th of February. Personally I prefer the later, with hope that the replacement amplifier for the SODAR will arrive very soon. Jon worked all day on the Summit and the second generator (Nancy) which we had problems getting started. The day started pretty well with the Summit collecting its first data of the season. Unfortunately, Jon found a bug in the system. It looks like every time we power cycle the Iridium phone, every Ethernet connection on the hub flashes and disconnects the instruments for a few tens of a second. Somehow the Summit does not appreciate this little kick and replies by stopping its duty. Nancy on the other hand was much more docile today. Jon figured out the magic combination of parameters to get it started. In some way, playing with the engines is a bit like preparing a chocolate soufflé. If you get one of the ingredients wrong or if the oven is at the wrong temperature, the soufflé will do its best trying to rise but will eventually collapse back at the bottom of the dish. Nancy had been doing that for the last few days. Today however, it started 4 times in a row without complaining. With this victory in hand, Jon will try tomorrow another recipe: 2 soufflés in parallel. What I mean by that is that we need to have a method (a script) that manages the two engines in order to always one working at any time. Jon has been working on that in Sydney and he will now tune it to make it work in those more extreme conditions. With a few things now crossed out of our job list, I realised that until the amplifier makes a landing in Dome C, all the remaining jobs could only be done from the one computer. Jon being stapled to it with a time bomb around his neck, I had to resign myself to the last job away from the keyboard: the evil inventory. This task is definitely the most boring there is, but it is also an important one for the planning of next year's deployment. I won't go through the details. I bet no one cares how many flat-head screw driver we have in stock in the AASTINO. I took the opportunity to do a bit of a clean up as well. So far it had been almost impossible to take a descent picture of the interior of the AASTINO without having a bunch of tools messing the view. The tent was also the subject of this clean up and is now ready for the open day we have organised on Sunday. We thought it would fit well to give a tour of the AASTINO to the people of the station on Australia day. We have the Champagne ready and now a spotless, state of the art, scientific facility. After dinner (and a few slices of lemon meringue pie), a station wide baby-foot competition was organised. Let me first describe for our non-Latin readers what baby-foot is. To put it simply, baby-foot is a table soccer game. Each side (you can have one or two people per side) has four handles which controls a line of soccer player figurines. The aim is to use them to kick the ball into the goal of the opposing team. Where Australian pubs have pool tables, the French and Italian ones have baby-foot tables. I introduced Jon to the rules of that game in Dumont-D'Urville where they have a table and he liked it enough not to spend a day without playing it now. In Dome C however, the baby-foot is Italian and there is a few differences with the French one. In the French baby-foot, the feet of the figurines are made of rubber so you can get a hold of the ball. This leads to a game focused on pass and fake shoots. In the Italian baby-foot, the figurines feet are hard plastic and the sides of the table are curved. The game is therefore based on speed. There is also a few minor rule differences, but the game is essentially the same: scoring ten goals before you opponent. Most of the station entered the competition which should last two or three days (playing in the evening, after dinner). Two people per team, best of three games. The teams were drawn from a hat and the first games have started at 8:30 tonight. I will keep you posted of the results when the competition is finally over. So far the Italians are doing well (playing on home ground and rules it was to be expected). At eleven I left to do my balloon launch and set another record with a ground wind speed of 0.1m/s. More tomorrow...

Thursday, 23 January 2003 With this diary entry I will hang up my gloves (and my parka, boots, etc). I.m now in McMurdo, on the way home, and Christchurch is only 4 or 5 flying hours away by C-141. Last night was spent tidying up some last-minute things, and flowed smoothly into today via the usual path of midnight. A short time later I was bidding farewell to all my friends and colleagues at Dome C, and preparing to board the Twin Otter. Shortly before closing the doors the co-pilot produced a full-sized sledgehammer from one of the hatches and walked purposefully towards the front of the plane. I wondered if perhaps the GPS or one of the radios needed some fine-tuning, and he'd been given the same set of electronic tools we had to work with at Dome C. As it turned out, he placed a block of wood against each ski in turn, set his foot against it, and then gave the wood an almighty wallop with the sledgehammer. This broke the ski free from the ice, where it had frozen solid over the past few days. The flight to McMurdo was about 5 hours in total, broken by a short stop at "Mid-point Charlie" to refuel. Mid-point Charlie is nothing more than a fuel bladder, some drums, a couple of flags and a patch of yellow snow. It's actually quite eerie to set down in such an isolated location, and to appreciate just how empty Antarctica is. McMurdo, on the other hand, is a bustling metropolis after Dome C. Soon after arriving I withdrew $60 from the Wells Fargo automatic teller machine . not because I needed any money, but just because I could. I can surf the net, ring up anyone I like, and have just looked in horror at the 720 emails that have gathered in my inbox on the UNSW computer. At McMurdo I have been given the status of a "transient", in recognition of the fact that I am just passing through. This gives me a bed in the "bunk room", a medium-sized room packed to capacity with 15 double-bunks. McMurdo probably has many fine features . I know that some folk like it a lot. To me it's too big, and is always a bit of a rude shock after the utopian social environment at South Pole or Dome C. I'm too busy adjusting to the idea of locked doors and keys (and things you have to pay for) to appreciate its finer points. Having now been away from the real word for over a month, I've got quite a bit of adjusting to do. Farewell, dear reader, and please join me in wishing Jon and Tony every success as they complete the preparation of the AASTINO to spend its first year alone at Dome C.

Hello world. John is leaving tonight to Mc Murdo. So as the French say: "Le roi est mort, vive le roi!". In other terms, I am proclaming myself the new king of the diaries. It was a simple thing to do since Jon is in the AASTINO working on summit (at 11pm, mind you). Unfortunately for you readers that will mean that the diaries will be a bit shorter. You have probably already compared my style with John's on last year's diaries and the most obvious difference is that mine are twice as short (but I prefer the term "to the point"). To compensate, I will try to increase the amount of things to tell by throwing myself from the top of the AASTINO or mixing some Jet-A1 into Jon's water bottle (kids, do not try this at home!) With John it's 1/3 of the work force gone and 3/4 of the experience. It will be a tough job for the two kids that we are to get everything done on time. We made a list of things left to do and it barely fitted on a sheet of paper. We are however quite confident that we will succeed since John has done all the jobs requiring an advanced knowledge of electronics. We are now essentially left to get the 2 science instruments working and get a better hold on the generators starting procedure (and mood). Today the two J's mastered the Wakey-Wakey board. This job was mainly composed of a speed competition to see who could get the fastest pulse from a 9V battery. John won by a few tens of milliseconds which is not much in any Olympic event, but a huge lead in this AASTINO event (The AASTINO games include events such as solder iron jump, fire extinguisher throw and SODAR short-circuiting race). The big problem with the Wakey-Wakey rather came from the supervisor computer which is supposed to tell the Wakey that it is still alive by sending this electrical pulse through the 5th pin of a parrallel port. Not seeing any pulse, we digged into Michael Ashley's software and concluded the " echo 'Ee' " line did not send a pulse to the 5th pin but to the 6th. We thought we were pretty clever to have figured that out but unfortunately Michael shattered our egos by emailing us the real fix which had nothing to do whit this 'Ee' line. In the afternoon, while Jon was hand-wrestling with the Summit, I went down the crypt. This place is the scariest place in Dome C (I take that back, the top of Richard's 30m tower is scarier). It has a few features in common with hell. For example, it is buried deep underground, it is hot and there is no candy dispenser. It is also very uncomfortable since it is as high as my shoulders. Once in the crypt I fully defended the Icecam from any alien intrusion by surrounding the machine with red tape and many labels forbiding anyone who speaks English to touch the holy instrument. After this I did my daily weather balloon launch. I can't remember exactly how much did john say about that, so let me explain what this is. I am effectively in Dome C to work for our group and also for the University of Nice. Both our Universities have the common goal to quantify the astronomical properties of the atmosphere. So instead of staying in our respective corners, we have decided to collaborate together. for this reason I spent 2 months in Nice last Summer in order to be trained on weather balloons that I am now launching every day on the behalf of my french colleagues. The balloons are filled with helium and carry a sonde that measures pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed. It sends the data to a receiver tuned to the frequency emitted by the sonde, giving us profiles of all these parameters up to about 20km. Today was a very successfull launch. There was no wind so the balloon went straight up. It showed that the ground temperature was -19.3 degrees Celcius, the warmest temperature we have had so far. When you come to think about it, it is actually warmer than what they have in the North-East of the USA (aren't we lucky). In the late afternoon I played a bit with the web camera. Testing it and fixing it to the bench in order to have a permanent centrered view of the Concordia station (this is my cameraman side speaking here). In the mean time Jon helped filling the 2 tanks with 200 litres of Jet-A1. This is only a preliminary step to make sure there is no leak in the tanks before pouring the whole 2,500 litres in them. Once again the highlight of the day was the terrific dinner made by Jean-Louis. This time, Civet de Lievre and Crepes au Grand-Marnier. If you don't understand what it is, it is probably better since you won't know what you are missing. At midnight we accompanied John and the 4 other passenger to the Twin-Otter. The farewell took forever because two of the passengers were journalists who wanted to get the whole scene on tape. We had to shake hands about 10 times before they were satisfied and got on board. Once the doors locked the plane warmed up for about 10 minutes before taking off in the clouds of ice it lifted off the ground with its propellers. One down, two more to go. This situation is almost reminiscent of the adventure shows we get on TV these days. That's all for today.

Hello world. John is leaving tonight to Mc Murdo. So as the French say: "Le roi est mort, vive le roi!". In other terms, I am proclaming myself the new king of the diaries. It was a simple thing to do since Jon is in the AASTINO working on summit (at 11pm, mind you). Unfortunately for you readers that will mean that the diaries will be a bit shorter. You have probably already compared my style with John's on last year's diaries and the most obvious difference is that mine are twice as short (but I prefer the term "to the point"). To compensate, I will try to increase the amount of things to tell by throwing myself from the top of the AASTINO or mixing some Jet-A1 into Jon's water bottle (kids, do not try this at home!) With John it's 1/3 of the work force gone and 3/4 of the experience. It will be a tough job for the two kids that we are to get everything done on time. We made a list of things left to do and it barely fitted on a sheet of paper. We are however quite confident that we will succeed since John has done all the jobs requiring an advanced knowledge of electronics. We are now essentially left to get the 2 science instruments working and get a better hold on the generators starting procedure (and mood). Today the two J's mastered the Wakey-Wakey board. This job was mainly composed of a speed competition to see who could get the fastest pulse from a 9V battery. John won by a few tens of milliseconds which is not much in any Olympic event, but a huge lead in this AASTINO event (The AASTINO games include events such as solder iron jump, fire extinguisher throw and SODAR short-circuiting race). The big problem with the Wakey-Wakey rather came from the supervisor computer which is supposed to tell the Wakey that it is still alive by sending this electrical pulse through the 5th pin of a parrallel port. Not seeing any pulse, we digged into Michael Ashley's software and concluded the " echo 'Ee' " line did not send a pulse to the 5th pin but to the 6th. We thought we were pretty clever to have figured that out but unfortunately Michael shattered our egos by emailing us the real fix which had nothing to do whit this 'Ee' line. In the afternoon, while Jon was hand-wrestling with the Summit, I went down the crypt. This place is the scariest place in Dome C (I take that back, the top of Richard's 30m tower is scarier). It has a few features in common with hell. For example, it is buried deep underground, it is hot and there is no candy dispenser. It is also very uncomfortable since it is as high as my shoulders. Once in the crypt I fully defended the Icecam from any alien intrusion by surrounding the machine with red tape and many labels forbiding anyone who speaks English to touch the holy instrument. After this I did my daily weather balloon launch. I can't remember exactly how much did john say about that, so let me explain what this is. I am effectively in Dome C to work for our group and also for the University of Nice. Both our Universities have the common goal to quantify the astronomical properties of the atmosphere. So instead of staying in our respective corners, we have decided to collaborate together. for this reason I spent 2 months in Nice last Summer in order to be trained on weather balloons that I am now launching every day on the behalf of my french colleagues. The balloons are filled with helium and carry a sonde that measures pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed. It sends the data to a receiver tuned to the frequency emitted by the sonde, giving us profiles of all these parameters up to about 20km. Today was a very successfull launch. There was no wind so the balloon went straight up. It showed that the ground temperature was -19.3 degrees Celcius, the warmest temperature we have had so far. When you come to think about it, it is actually warmer than what they have in the North-East of the USA (aren't we lucky). In the late afternoon I played a bit with the web camera. Testing it and fixing it to the bench in order to have a permanent centrered view of the Concordia station (this is my cameraman side speaking here). In the mean time Jon helped filling the 2 tanks with 200 litres of Jet-A1. This is only a preliminary step to make sure there is no leak in the tanks before pouring the whole 2,500 litres in them. Once again the highlight of the day was the terrific dinner made by Jean-Louis. This time, Civet de Lievre and Crepes au Grand-Marnier. If you don't understand what it is, it is probably better since you won't know what you are missing. At midnight we accompanied John and the 4 other passenger to the Twin-Otter. The farewell took forever because two of the passengers were journalists who wanted to get the whole scene on tape. We had to shake hands about 10 times before they were satisfied and got on board. Once the doors locked the plane warmed up for about 10 minutes before taking off in the clouds of ice it lifted off the ground with its propellers. One down, two more to go. This situation is almost reminiscent of the adventure shows we get on TV these days. That's all for today.

Well, I'm still at Dome C. However I didn't get much done because I've already started to mentally disengage from the AASTINO, and shift into travelling mode. The weather here is good, though a little overcast, with a remarkably high temperature of -19 C this afternoon. At McMurdo however, things continue to be crook. Our Twin Otter will probably leave for there around midnight tonight, although once I'm there it's unclear how long it will be until the C-141 is able to come and take me back to Christchurch. Although the Twin Otter can land on anything, the conditions have to be just right to satisfy the more finicky C-141. Even after a storm like this abates, it can apparently take up to two days to clear all the snow off the runway and the access roads. About the only useful thing I did today was to help track down the missing 5 microsecond pulse. This is the pulse that the Supervisor sends every minute to the Wakey-wakey board to reassure it that it's still alive, thereby avoiding a premature burial. Watching for a pulse which is only 5 millionths of a second long and only occurs once every 60 seconds would normally try the patience of a saint. Fortunately, our multicolour multilingual all-singing all-dancing Tektronix oscilloscope takes such things in its stride, and did all the hard work for us. To convince ourselves that the oscilloscope was actually watching out for pulses, we generated a few of our own by striking a wire across the terminal of a 9-volt battery. This led to a competition to see who could generate the shortest pulse. A few milliseconds was the norm, but I managed one lucky hit of 112 microseconds. That was about it for me. After lunch I did some of the videoing I'd been too busy to do up until now, including some "Skidoo-cam" of variable success, and then went to bed. Jon and Tony will fill you in with the real achievements of the afternoon, including putting the first 200 litres of fuel into our big tanks. Dinner was the usual Jean-Louis triumph. Main course featured "lievre" which, judging by the size of the bones, was an animal about the size of a miniature poodle, but probably wasn't. Either way, it was delicious. Crepes, hot from the pan and drizzled with Grand Marnier, finished things off nicely.

Today was my last day at Dome C (probably). The storm is till raging at McMurdo, but chances are it will move on tomorrow, and so will I. For most of the day we checked out the various devices and sub-systems that we will depend on once Jon and Tony close the door to the AASTINO at the beginning of February, and leave it to its own devices, so to speak, for the next nine months. Some of these things worked well - for example we can use the solar panels to charge the batteries, or we can switch that power to heat one of the instruments. Other things just plain didn't work, for example the pressure sensor that is supposed to let us know how much fuel is left in the tanks by measuring the "head" of fuel. However, we think all the "mission critical" things are now working. We tested out our ingenious scheme for shutting down and restarting a recalcitrant engine control computer, but it was a bit of a disaster. I idea was a bit like that apparently used in nuclear-armed submarines: before anything as monumental as shutting off an engine can occur, both the webcam and the Dallas bus have to agree to do it. Then, we perform the electronic equivalent of pulling out a fuse, waiting a while, and putting it back. While our scheme worked exactly as planned, the effect on the Stirling engine was not good. We tried it on Nancy (we're leaving Sid to chug away continuously) and she threw a major tantrum, sending the display screen black, locking us out from remote control, and screeching shrilly via the beeper - and that was after we put the fuse back. Clearly, we don't quite know what we're doing here and we think we'll abandon this whole idea. I don't think the engine computer will crash, anyway. A second scheme, for fooling the engine control computer into thinking the flame is still burning while we quickly shut off the fuel and reset the oxygen sensor, worked perfectly. You win some, you lose some. For me this was a long and somewhat stressful day, trying to finish off the electronic control systems so that Jon and Tony can concentrate on the science instruments and on shaking down the engines. For Jon and Tony, tomorrow will be a chance to have some extra bench space and a spare coat-hook in the AASTINO. We've had a hell of a good time and, as the photos show, put a beaut little laboratory together. Let's hope it all works now. This will be my last diary from Dome C, but I'll try to send back a couple of reports of my journey home. Dinner tonight include fresh waffles by Jean-Louis, a good way to conclude a stay at Dome C.

The day dawned white and overcast (as opposed to grey and overcast) with winds of up to 11 knots (~20 km/hr). It's also snowing a bit - not big fluffy snowflakes but gritty little ice particles that are sometimes called "diamond dust". The wind makes it feel a lot colder, and is all the more biting because we're not used to it. It seems like a gale (and it makes our flags fly nicely!), but in reality it's about equal to the average wind speed at South Pole. The light makes a big difference to the way the station looks. You might think that snow is snow and just basically white, but it's remarkable how the appearance changes. With a clear sky and the sun low (as it is most of the time), the sastrugi are highlighted with bright facets and dark shadows, and the ice crystals sparkle from different angles as you walk past. When the sun is higher, the surface is starkly white and the surface features are flattened out. Today, with the sun behind clouds, the sky and the ground blend together into one big fluffy ball of cotton wool. The bad weather is apparently the edge of a major storm that has hit McMurdo - the big US station on the Antarctic coast. No planes are flying in or out of there, so the Twin Otter that arrived here around lunch time will stay here until conditions improve. When it does leave, possibly tomorrow or Wednesday, it will take me with it to McMurdo, on the start of my journey home. Unfortunately, that will bring my diaries to end, as I return once more to being a mild-mannered professor of physics. With any reasonable luck Tony and Jon will keep us all up to date on what is happening back in the AASTINO. For now, however, I'm still at Dome C, and we're largely engrossed in getting all the electronics to work. Our big challenge today as to get the Dallas bus operating, and the wakey-wakey board working so that the Supervisor computer would be properly power-cycled. The latter involved modifying an existing wakey-wakey board, and jollying up the 1 Hz oscillator that drives it. This all would have been made a lot easier if we'd remembered to bring any electronics components, and if aliens hadn't made off with every single one of our 6,100 spare resistors. (We're working with automotive wire strippers, a few automotive crimp connectors, some diodes Tony salvaged from the old Icecam battery pack, and two boxes of very large and unlabelled resistors the Station crew found somewhere.) By late afternoon the Wakey-wakey board was running nicely and ready to install. (Development and testing time was speeded up by a factor of 1,000 because Tektronix had thoughtfully provided a 1 kHz output on the front panel of the oscilloscope - no doubt with exactly this eventuality in mind). Although it all worked perfectly on the bench, installing the Wakey-wakey board into the Supervisor computer resulted in a shower of sparks, a brief flame, and lingering smoke chillingly reminiscent of the great SODAR disaster. Fortunately, no lasting damage was done, except perhaps to my pride. In order to improve the cooling of one of the electronic witches, I had mounted it on a conducting piece of the circuit board, which made that part of the circuit board "live". This would have been fine - if I hadn't then connected this live piece of circuit board to the chassis with a dirty great bolt. My other great feat of incompetence today was less spectacular but more amusing for the onlookers. Making an insulating spacer by carefully cutting a piece of sleeve off one of our automotive crimp connectors, I sliced through the final piece of plastic which went "ping!", ricocheted off my right ear and disappeared. After I'd made a futile search of the floor and surrounding areas and resigned myself to having to make another one, Jon and Tony let me in on the joke - it was stuck in my beard. Another moment of excitement occurred when the Station power went down. We dug out our inverter and were just about to demonstrate our total independence from the Station power when, unfortunately, it came back on again. In truth, all we're using Station power for is to run the computer monitor, soldering iron and oscilloscope. The two solar panels, and Sid the Stirling engine, are providing more power than we can use. Most of the day was spent "dangling Dallases", i.e. daisy-chaining together the little circuit boards that will measure temperature, fuel level, solar panel current and so on, and also switch on and off the room circulation fans, some parts of the engines and other important things. The "Dallas one-wire bus" is a wondrous thing that allows all these things to be done with just a single wire. This, in principle, simplifies our lives a lot. However in practice it's a trifle tricky to get working properly - especially when armed only with automotive electrical tools. To make things a bit more reliable we're planning to use the webcamera to switch the engines on and off. We think this is a good idea, but then again we are at 13,000 feet and it might be wise to review the concept tomorrow - after a good night's rest.

Fresh orange juice (make it yourself with the electric juicer) and straight-from-the-oven croissants, baked by Jean-Louis, make a good start to any day - especially a Sunday. We began by getting our various networks up and running in the AASTINO, and practised remotely switching on and off the various pieces of electronics and other hardware crowded into the AASTINO. It is a sad fact of electronic life that, from time to time, computers and other things simply stop working. The reasons are known only the computers themselves; the Macintosh "bomb" icon and the Windows "blue screen of death" are final and totally unenlightening. Fortunately, turning the offending device off, then on again, usually clears the problem. In the AASTINO, however, there will be no-one to push buttons, unplug power cables, or hit "reset". We've therefore tried to foresee every eventuality, and have provided a way of remotely shutting down and restarting every single device. Most of these things can be done by us, from back at UNSW, via the Iridium and the Supervisor. But what happens if one of these two devices crashes? Here's what we plan: the Iridium phone will be restarted once per day, automatically by the Supervisor computer. The Supervisor itself will be allowed to run continuously; however if it sulks and refuses to talk to us for a day, or if it crashes, the wakey-wakey board will step in and hit it on the head; restarting it 4 minutes later. Trickiest of all are the engines. We are finding that they run beautifully once they are alight, but that starting them at this altitude is not easy. Jon is working away to find the magic combination of air, fuel, and other factors, but in the meantime we're very reluctant to periodically shut down an engine just to keep it on its toes. In particular, we don't want the Supervisor to go feral and shut an engine down accidentally. Solving this one will be today's challenge. Just before lunch a pair of journalist from the Italian national TV network RAI Uno arrived at the AASTINO. They had a camera that was much bigger than Vanessa's and a tripod that would have brought tears to her eyes. They settled in and started filming everything they could but, as lunch was approaching, we decided to leave them to it. After lunch we read our emails and were horrified to learn the terrible news that Mount Stromlo Observatory, near Canberra, had been largely destroyed by fire, along with some 380 homes in Canberra. Our hearts go out to our friends and colleagues who are putting the pieces back together after this tragedy. Returning to the AASTINO we found the RAI Uno crew back at work. They had erected a 5-metre long boom with the camera on one end, all counterweighted and mounted on a tripod, with a remote TV screen to see what they were filming. This allowed them to take sweeping shots from high and low, and achieve otherwise impossible camera angles. It's going to be an awesome production. Following the weekly all-station briefing meeting, we actually took some time off (it is Sunday, after all). Our relaxation took the form of a two-hour tour of the new station, kindly organised for us by Mario Zucchelli, head of the Italian Antarctic Program. Our tour guide was Jean-Paul Fave, construction advisor. The station consists of two 16-metre diameter 3-storey cylinders, linked by an elevated passageway. One cylinder will be for "noisy" activities, and has the restaurant, kitchen and lounge room on the top floor. On the floor below is a gymnasium and lots of storage, while the lowest floor has workshops and mechanical services. The other cylinder, the "quiet" one, has laboratories on the top floor, and the sixteen bedrooms on the floor below. Some of the rooms have a quite outstanding view of the AASTINO and the Nice tower, and the astronomers are already queuing up for the best windows. The lowest floor has an extensive medical facility, offices, flight operations and the all-important radio and communications room. A unique feature of the design is that each cylinder is supported by six hydraulic operated legs. These can be adjusted in height to compensate for creep of the ice and for snow accumulation. It's going to be a magnificent facility when finished. It will operate year-round, starting in about 2005, and will have a complement of 16 winter-over people. Meanwhile, RAI Uno continued to zoom and swoop across the AASTINO from all possible angles. I think they like us. To complete our afternoon off, we headed out to the Atmospheric Science area, where Rich, Delphine, Bob and Von have created a most impressive little research facility over the past few weeks. Rich (from the US) and Delphine (from France) have erected a 30-metre high tower, an incredible feat in these conditions. They did it all by hand, the only motorised assistance being in the form of a Skidoo, driven by Von, that hauled each new 2-metre section up via a pulley fitted to the top of the most recently constructed section. We climbed to the top and enjoyed incredible views of the station, the AASTINO, and the vast, empty horizon. The purpose of the tower is to allow extremely accurate measurements to be made of the reflectivity of the snow, from various angles. Complementing these measurements are those of Bob Stone, who has an instrumented sled (appropriated dubbed the "Bob-sled") which is towed behind a Skidoo to ensure that the measurements from Rich and Delphine's tower are representative of the snow over a wider area. This work is all aimed at checking (or "validating", in NASA parlance), the performance of a earth-observation satellite launched last year. Meanwhile, Von is making very accurate measurements of the infrared sky brightness - something of great interest to astronomers as well as atmospheric physicists. It looks as if my stay at Dome C will come to an end on Wednesday, giving me just over 48 hours now to make whatever contributions I can. I'll be flying by Twin Otter to the US coastal station of McMurdo, then north by C-141 to Christchurch. Jon and Tony will remain here until 4 February - hopefully enough time to really shake the system down. After the tours we settled back into our routine of making things work in the AASTINO. A major success was getting the webcam working. We hope to be able to put images online soon - Iridium satellite phone willing. We've set it up inside the AASTINO, looking out the window towards the new station. When we finally leave at the end of summer, we will add a large mirror on a pole outside so that we can also see the AASTINO. We've identified just the mirror we need - it's screwed to the wall in the bathroom. Sounds like a job for delicate negotiations, followed by some quick work with the cordless screwdriver.

After two long and difficult days, it's time to get up to date with the diary and other important correspondence. The weekend got off to a bad start on Friday evening when we brought a very full jerry can of Jet-A1 into the AASTINO from outside, unfortunately forgetting how much this stuff expands with temperature. When we opened the lid a fountain of fuel sprayed out across the room, covering Jon and me and anything else that was in the way. The worst thing about jet fuel is that stinks, and it takes forever to get the smell out of your clothes. On a more positive note, it seems to make quite a good floor cleaner, and now our antistatic mat looks like new again. Most of Friday was devoted to Icecam and COBBER. Working on these twin instruments is awkward in the extreme. The electronics is in a narrow "crypt" several metres below the ground, which is accessed via a long ladder. Inside the crypt it is poorly lit, bitterly cold and there is not enough room to swing a cat - assuming you could get hold of one in Antarctica. The walls are lined with banks of batteries, under which are two huge, long tanks of glycol. It is not a place for the claustrophobic. Icecam and COBBER share a common computer system, and a battery power supply that lasts all year. They achieve this feat by spending most of their time "asleep"; the only thing happening is that a very low-power piece of electronics is steadily counting the seconds. Every two hours this piece of electronics, appropriately called the "wakey-wakey board", prods the computer into life. Within two minutes the computer has completed the measurements, stored the data onto a Flash Disk, sent a synopsis of the data back to us at UNSW via ARGOS satellite, and shut itself down again. If for some reason the computer crashes, or decides it would like to stay on a bit longer and play Minesweeper with itself, the wakey-wakey board shuts it down anyway. Like the gods of death and rebirth, the wakey-wakey board has a dual role. ARGOS, by the way, is a system of satellites designed especially for data gathering from remote, low-power sites such as ocean buoys. It is possible to send data to it using very low power; whichever ARGOS satellite is overhead at the time grabs the data and then beams them down to a ground station later in its orbit. It's therefore ideal for this experiment, the chief limitation being that we are limited to just 32 bytes (32 letters) per satellite pass. Still, it's remarkable how much information can be conveyed in those 32 bytes. Speaking of cats (which, like all exotic animals, are totally banned from Antarctica) I was saddened to learn from Jean-Louis that the Dome C cat had died just before we arrived. According to Jean-Louis, the Station got low on food and they had to eat it. (It sounds almost plausible in Jean-Louis' solemn French accent.) On my previous visit here two years ago, the cat was very much alive. Mind you, the only evidence for its existence was in the form of fresh droppings each morning, in the tray of kitty-litter that Jean Louis kept, carefully placed where it would just be noticed, in a corner of the kitchen. Nevertheless, Dome C is the poorer for its loss. The Twin Otter that had arrived a couple of days ago finally left this morning. The plane was here for two days because the pilots needed to discharge their compulsory requirement for 36 hours rest before they could leave again. Next job I get will have a clause like that in the contract, too. It was fun to chat to the pilots during mealtimes - like all pilots I have spoken to in Antarctica they were fiercely proud of their aircraft, and immediately leapt to fend off any criticism of its manifest deficiencies (such as being as slow as a slug). Sid the Stirling engine continues to run well, and for most of this afternoon we ran Nancy as well. One particular triumph is the exhaust system. The design of this probably generated more debate in our group at UNSW during the year than any other technical issue, as keeping the pipes ice-free when the exhaust is roughly 50% water vapour is a tough challenge. In the end we went for two slender pipes joined together along their length, rising vertically and uninsulated about for about a metre from the top of the AASTINO. After several days of running there is not a single crystal of ice on the exhaust stack. Amongst the minor afflictions the UNSW team are suffering from, my frostbitten nose seems to have attracted the greatest comment. I am convinced that the injury occurred while we were assembling the AASTINO in the first few days, but others are unkindly suggesting that excessive fanging of the Skidoo is to blame. Not wishing to see me end up like Tycho Brahe, the Station crew have helped me fashion a possum-skin nose warmer that attaches to my goggles. I think it is very becoming - Jon and Tony say it makes me look like a dag. (Possums of course are a feral pest in New Zealand, after some moron introduced them there from Australia. New Zealanders are therefore always on the lookout for inventive new things to make out of possum fur, and they seem to have succeeded in flogging the Italian Antarctic Program a bag of offcuts. I don't know who the person was who introduced possums to New Zealand, but it was possibly the same one who introduced rabbits, cane toads and four-wheel-drives into Australia.) Another major achievement of today has been setting up all the flags. Tony did this all himself, and did such a good job that already people are coming out to the AASTINO to be photographed in front of it. Basically we have the flags of the four nations involved in our project (Australia, France, Italy and the US) flying in a row at the entrance to the AASTINO site. Above the AASTINO, attached to the copper pipe we brought along as a spare for the Stirling engine exhaust, the UNSW flag flies alone. (Flag protocol formally dictates that it should not be any higher than the Australian flag, so we could be in for a hard time from the Governor General when we get home - assuming he doesn't have anything else on his mind.) In the course of developing the AASTINO we've gone from a naively simple concept to a very complicated realisation. While a single computer (the Supervisor) is basically in control of everything, somehow every item seems to need a different interface. Thus, we have an Ethernet, RS232, RS422, and a Dallas 1-wire bus strung around the walls. The challenge for the next few days will be to get it all to work, but by the end of today we were merrily switching major pieces of hardware on and off with just a few keystrokes (well, lots of keystrokes actually - it is Linux after all). Friday was a particularly frustrating day for me because, as a result of the intense cold, the tips of my thumbs have cracked and split in several places, making it painful and awkward to do any fine work. Now that we have some resistors, it's essential that I get on with building the various pieces of electronics we need. Unfortunately it proved impossible - even if I battled on, the circuit components ended up with blood on them, which probably reduces their life expectancy, and makes all the resistors look like 2.2k, 2% tolerance. However, on Saturday help was at hand. Attracted by our new flags, the station doctor (Sergio) dropped by. He was just taking some time off, but I took the opportunity to ask him about my thumbs. (Yet another advantage of Antarctica - a couple of days ago it was Internet shopping, today it's a doctor who pays house-calls.) He prescribed some magic cream for my thumbs and they're feeling better already.(Technical note - flag poles are not curved, its just an effect from the camera) Just before dinner tonight Tony started setting up the webcam, which we hope to have online throughout the year. We're running short of wire (like everything else), so Tony set about joining two short lengths of twin flex to make a longer one. After carefully stripping the insulation from the ends, tinning, soldering, then meticulously sleeving the joint with heat shrink tubing, Tony was amazed to find he still had two pieces of wire - one of which was joined in a loop. Jon fell off his chair laughing. At this altitude it's inevitable you'll make mistakes, the secret is to make only those that won't kill you.

Things are a bit hectic here at present. We're all flat out getting the actual science instruments up and running (which is why we're here, after all). At the same time, our physical limitations are catching up with us, as minor frostbite, skin rashes caused by the dryness, decomposing feet and other little ailments slow us down. For me, cracked fingers and thumbs are making typing (and everything else, for that matter) a bit difficult. Please rest assured that we are forging ahead. However, we ask for your understanding if details of today's activities have to wait until tomorrow.

Today should have been the day that our acoustic radar burst into song. Instead, it burst into flames (well, lots of smoke anyway). It was like this... The acoustic radar (also called a SODAR) had been working just fine at UNSW, running off the mains. Prior to that, we'd run it off 24 Volts DC for several years, at UNSW, South Pole and at Calerne Observatory in France. Then, it went back to the factory to have the calibration of the antenna checked, and to have a new Linux operating system installed. And, unbeknown to us, while it was at the factory they... ...opened up the case and replaced the 24 Volt amplifier with a 12 Volt one... ...which would have been fine, had they told us, and especially if they had removed the sticker that says "Input voltage 19 - 35 Volts". Actually, even a little hint would have been nice - something like "Surprise!!!" written on the outside of the case. When we first switched it on it popped the 1 Amp circuit breaker. Now, we know it draws a bit more than an Amp, so this was not too unusual, but I was perhaps unwise to have "commented out" the circuit breaker with a short length of wire. This left only our main 32 Amp instrument circuit breaker in the line, and this was more than happy to provide the 30 Amps that the SODAR had suddenly acquired a taste for. We removed the obviously exploded electrolytic capacitors, but it's still a dead short from input supply to ground. Since the SODAR is an important part of Tony's PhD thesis work, he is understandably a bit put out. He's taking it well though, and we're now frantically trying to get a new power amplifier (and a 24 Volt to 12 Volt converter) flown in from Christchurch. It might just be possible in the three weeks left before the Station closes. Rather better news surrounds the Stirling engines. Sid is running continuously - so far without a problem - while we have been deliberately stopping and starting Nancy to learn more about the start-up behaviour. We can now set the AASTINO to any temperature we like, using a Eurotherm PID temperature controller to suck cold outside air into the building in exactly the quantities required. We set the temperature to +30C for a couple of hours, just for the pure pleasure of being truly warm for a change. One of the great mysteries of this trip has been what happened to all of our electronics spares. We had quite a good kit together, including a full range of resistors. The whole lot has, quite simply, vanished. It's possible that the aliens feel they have now abducted plenty of people, but are running short of resistors. If so, I can sympathise with them. Dome C is along way from the nearest Dick Smith store. This morning I put together a shopping list of resistors and also some Schottky diodes (see below). This afternoon, they arrived, via Twin Otter, from Terra Nova Bay! It was just like Internet shopping only better - delivered to our door and we don't even get a bill. This is just one example of the kind of pleasant things that occur surprisingly often in Antarctica. Another example was when there was a knock on the door of the AASTINO earlier today, and one of the Station crew presented me with two boxes of resistors, resplendent in their gaudy colour codes, and covering every possibility we could wish for. (A Schottky diode, by the way, is like a normal diode in that it conducts electricity in only one direction. However, it switches much faster, and imposes less of a penalty in terms of reducing the voltage. We use them a lot for two purposes. One is to prevent the voltage on any line from going higher than it should, and thereby blowing things up. The other purpose is similar - to prevent static electricity from destroying the computer and other instruments. Static electricity is a menace of plague proportions in Antarctica. Schottky diodes are the antibiotic pill of the electronics world.) During the course of the day we also installed our second instrument, SUMMIT, on the roof of the AASTINO. This required a bulldozer fitted with a crane. I never fail to be impressed by the precision and delicacy with which an experienced crane driver can manoeuvre tonnes of material around. (On the other hand, when he arrived he did run the bulldozer into the side of the AASTINO. I think it was just to save having to get out and knock on the door.) Prior to installation, we fitted SUMMIT with a canister of calcium hydride. Readers of diaries from previous years will know that calcium hydride is the stand-out champion at sucking up water vapour. We put it in many of our instruments to prevent ice forming on the inside of optical windows. Tony also sealed up ICECAM (again with some CaH2), and put in on the roof of the little orange building over the crypt. Finally, COBBER, an instrument to measure clouds at infrared wavelengths, was tested and readied for installation. The day finished on a good note. The same Twin Otter that brought some resistors and Schottky diodes for us also brought a new SIM card for our Iridium phone and, best of all, fresh vegetables.

If there's one thing better than a the sound of a two-stroke going flat out, it's the sound of a four-cylinder double-acting Stirling engine purring away, producing over 500 watts of electrical power. Actually, even better is the sound of two such engines running simultaneously. During the day, Jon worked like a man inspired - first discovering that both of our spare oxygen sensors have a more sanguine view of the amount of oxygen in the air here, and then exploring the fuel/air ratios needed to get the engines lit and coax them into life. Both Sid and Nancy responded well, with Nancy at one stage producing 580 watts. This is more than enough to run all of our instrumentation. We rang the manufacturer of the engine in Christchurch via Iridium, and they were able to confirm that the problem had arisen simply because the engines are designed mainly to run at sea level. One of the major applications of these Stirling engines is in ocean-going yachts and, largely because of the effect that gravity has on sea water, oceans do not exist at 3,800 metres (at least, not on Earth). The highlight of today's lunch was having Rich, a research meteorologist from the University of Washington, show us some high-resolution contour maps of the Dome C area. These maps had been generated a few years ago by an Italian and British team, using GPS and airborne radar. From the ground, the surrounding topography looks to be as a flat as pancake, and indeed it is. Surprisingly then, at first sight the maps seem to show that Dome C is a major mountain peak, rising above the surrounding terrain like the Matterhorn. However, the contours are spaced at 1 metre intervals, and you have to travel at least 100 km from here to see the elevation change by 100 metres. After lunch we took a short break from work to go on a tour of the EPICA "science trench". This is a long laboratory in which the ice cores undergo some preliminary analysis. Piers, a physicist with the British Antarctic Survey, kindly led us through all the various stages of the process, which begins with some electrical measurements, followed by slicing up the 10 cm diameter core into long strips so that different laboratories back in Europe can each have a piece. The sawing is done with bandsaws that look like they belong in a butcher's shop, and Karen was able to show us an impressive scar on her finger, indicating that accidents do occasionally happen. However, she reassured us that you never cut more than halfway through a finger before animal instinct takes over and rescues the situation. She was obviously correct - all of the bandsaw operators still had the standard number of digits on each hand. Here at Dome C, photos are taken in polarised light to elucidate the crystal structure, electrical measurements are made to determine what was in the air at the time the ice formed, and a thin slice is melted in order to undergo chemical analysis. It is amazing to look at a length of core, perhaps 2 metres long, knowing that it contains within it a precise history of the earth's environment some 800,000 years ago. Within the science trench, the temperature is kept at around -21 C, in order to avoid melting the ice. Warmly dressed, the various scientists were perfectly happy sawing, measuring and recording, while apparently still occasionally finding time to write amusing graffiti of questionable taste on the walls. Many of the EPICA team took some time off yesterday to play beach volleyball. Dressed appropriately (swimsuits plus boots) they survived the -30 C temperatures for about 10 minutes before calling it a day.Photos will follow (if I can get hold of them). Tony has installed the acoustic radar, or SODAR, on the roof of the AASTINO. We will fire it up tomorrow and see if we can detect the turbulence in the lower atmosphere here. In the course of this work Tony suffered yet another injury, slashing a finger on a piece of aluminium tape. It's easy to do, because skin gets so dry that just about anything will cut it. Fortunately Tony was able to raid the AASTINO first aid kit, which proved perfectly suited to the job of restoring him to full functionality. Our second science instrument, SUMMIT, has been sitting over in the carpentry shop for the last few days, trying hard not to look like a piece of spare timber. After lunch we put it onto a sled and towed it behind a Skidoo to our tent. It will require some minor work before it, too, goes onto the AASTINO roof. Our little tent is proving to be a very convenient additional work space. We are not heating it, but during the day the sun warms it up enough to make it quite comfortable to work in. We have rolled up the mosquito netting, as the mozzies don't seem to be much of a problem here at this time of year. -posted by John Story

If only we could have persuaded Tony to dress up in drag, stand on top of the AASTINO and trail 20 metres of bubble-wrap behind him, it would have been perfect. As it was, it was pretty good. Around about mid-morning the Kaesbohrer came out to the Astrophysics Tent. Two strong chains were used to attach the sled upon which the AASTINO sits to the back of the Kaesbohrer, the UNSW flag was carefully mounted on the sled, and away we went. Jon stayed in the AASTINO to keep an eye on things. Tony and I grabbed a Skidoo each, and while Tony took dozens of photos I captured what I could on video. We each had a radio, as did the Kaesbohrer driver, so that we could be in constant communication. The precession headed across the snow at no more than a fast walking pace. Inside the AASTINO, Jon reports that is was "rough", with lots of worrying creaks and noises. However nothing fell over, nothing was damaged, and we arrived at the summit of Robert hill about 20 minutes after setting off. There was quite a crowd of spectators lining the route - that is, if a station of now 51 people could constitute a crowd. Some even ran along ahead of the procession in order not to miss any of the highlights. The sky was fantastic, just a pure crystal blue hemisphere above the soft white snow. The AASTINO was gently pushed and prodded into position by the Kaesbohrer, we reconnected to the station electrical power, and that was that. Time for lunch. Well, not quite. First we all had to pose for photos in front of the AASTINO, in various combinations and postures, including the "official" photo with Mario Zucchelli. As is usually the case, the wind was so low that the UNSW flag refused to do more than a token flutter, but hopefully it's recognisable in some of the shots. After lunch, Tony set about putting up the tent, which we had bought from a camping shop at the last moment to give us a place to put the things that don't fit in the AASTINO while we're working on them. (We haven't had to use our tent yet, because we've been squatting in the Astrophysics Tent.) At the same time that Tony was putting the tent up, I started assembling the solar panels onto their stands. Both tasks took a ridiculous amount of time - as simple tasks sometimes do in Antarctica. After two hours Tony was still wrestling with telescoping rods that wouldn't stay together because the elastic was too cold, what seemed like acres of billowing cloth that had a mind of its own, and tent pegs that slipped gleefully out of the snow as soon as you turned your back on them. Meanwhile, I had assembled five of the six bright yellow steel bars that made up the solar panel frame, and the sixth was nowhere to be found. How one could possibly lose a 60 cm long, bright yellow piece of steel was a complete mystery, and all of us searched high and low for it. I even took off my yellow goggles so it would have more contrast against the snow. Just when I was about to trudge off to the carpentry shop and make a wooden substitute, and Tony was about to go totally insane, the tent suddenly erupted into a completed structure. Inspired, Jon and I picked up the fly of the tent and gave it a shake. Like a magician pulling a dove from a handkerchief, the yellow bar emerged and I was able to complete the frame. We've now switched on the 24 volt bus in the AASTINO, and we're happily charging the batteries from solar power. It's wonderful to see the control panel lit up with all the green and red digital displays. Jon has completed the exhaust system for the engines - something we didn't want to do until the great trans-Antarctic expedition (the whole 1.5 km of it) had been completed. Tomorrow we'll bleed the coolant and the fuel lines, and push the big button. As final statement of our readiness, last thing this afternoon I picked up 60 litres of Jet A1 from the station fuel dump.

On Sundays the station slows down a bit, but never really stops. The UNSW team are of course hard at work, completing the fit out of the AASTINO and installation of the engines. We're just about finished, and will try to start the engines tomorrow or the next day. We've also finished Icecam and, once the silicone sealant has properly set, will put it back outside to start its lonely year-long vigil of the skies. We're very pleased with how well things have gone during our first week at Dome C. All the re-assembly is now more or less complete, and the real fun will start once we switch it all on and see if we can get anything to work. The support from the Dome C station staff has been just wonderful. It's sometimes easy to forget the sheer complexity of operating a station on the Antarctic plateau - nothing is simple. Water for washing and general use is made by melting snow over an oil burner in a large container. A special area of the station is set aside as a clean snow area, and bulldozers go off there periodically to scoop up a large shovelful to dump into the melter. Unfortunately the water always ends up with a slightly unpleasant taste, but it doesn't pay to be fussy. Unlike at the South Pole, where each person is restricted to two 2-minute showers per week, there is no specific limit here on the frequency or duration of hot showers. Drinking water is brought here in 20 litre plastic containers from Dumont d'Urville, where a desalination plant operates. The containers are of course frozen solid, and have to be melted in the kitchen before use. Most people, however, drink mineral water - either Italian or Tasmanian according to taste. Lunch and dinner are served with wine, usually Australian cask wine, but good quality Australian wine is also trotted out on occasion. There's also lots of strange liquors that people put in their coffee - I'm reliably informed that Bailey's Irish Cream tastes a lot better in coffee than UHT milk. Although unlimited quantities of free alcohol are available all the time, no-one drinks to excess and most people don't drink at all. No-one wants to deaden their appreciation of an experience like Dome C. In addition, no-one wants to die, which is what could easily if happen if one were incautious here. On special occasions the ice-core drillers provide the station with "Christ ice" to put in drinks. This is 2000 year-old ice, and the air trapped in is so compressed that the ice fizzes and pops in a glass. Now that we have finished unpacking, we are continuing to discover that we have brought with us some very strange things, and left behind a few rather important ones. For example, amongst all our antistatic things we found a thing that looks like a dog muzzle. This is silly because dogs aren't allowed in Antarctica anymore, and even when they were allowed here they were never terribly good at soldering. We also found a clear liquid in an unlabelled glass container that we think is isopropyl alcohol. It seems to do a good job of all the things you'd use isopropyl alcohol for, so we'll just pretend it is. Essentially we have re-defined the term "isopropyl alcohol" to mean "the stuff in the bottle". Meanwhile, our colleagues back at UNSW are accusing us of taking every single Phillips-head screwdriver from the lab. We didn't. We swear we have only five here - not counting the little screwdriver things you put in the cordless drill and smash screw-heads to bits with. (This last comment is a gentle swipe at some of my younger colleagues.) This afternoon we were working in the AASTINO and the pho