This morning we walked out to the AASTINO again - skidoo's are scarce while the traverse containers are being unloaded - and when I eventually got there I found Jon outside staring at the roof of the AASTINO. Thinking he'd finally gone loopy I poked him..."Something we haven't though about is whether Nigel's fibres will see past everything else on the roof" he commented. Oh. Everything else on the roof being: SODAR, SUMMIT, an instrument Arcetri is getting installed and the exhaust pipe. Armed with just a measuring tape Jon jumped up on the roof and started calling measurements down to me, first my pen froze then my hand froze and we went back inside. Using that ever handy trig and after a few more measurements on the roof we calculated that everything would be fine, if we just take about 100mm off the top of the exhaust. Papa Smurf has been gone for one day and already we're chopping up the AASTINO.

Another measurement we had to make was to work out which way north is so we know which way to point Nigel's fibres. No, a compass doesn't work. Luckily I just happen to have with me a list of sun positions versus universal time. By measuring the angle of a shadow and knowing the position of the sun we can work out which way is north. Who needs technology???

Happy with our measurements we had planned to put Nigel's fibres on the roof so he was all finished, however due to the wind dropping the windchill to -54 degrees we unanimously decided it was too cold. Leaving Nigel we turned back to the job of aligning MASS. Just as we thought we had it perfect Jon noticed part of the instrument wobbled around a fair bit due to a dodgy nylon grub screw. Easy to fix we have an AASTINO full of screws, we hunted through all the boxes of sorted screws to no avail. Finally I grabbed the plastic cup full of miscellaneous screws and bolts. Delving deep we found one that fit perfectly. In it went, final alignment checks were done and voila, a beautifully aligned MASS.

One problem though...someone...mentioning no names (Smokey Smurf) had dropped an allen key down the vent in the heaters. We could see it though the vents which are about 5mm wide. What we needed was a really long magnet...nope, none of those...we grabbed a small magnet and magnetised a screw driver and I carefully tried to ease the allen key back up the vent (somehow I ended up in charge of the rescue operation). Oops, I dropped the allen key further down. It was now resting on a plate between two finger eating fans...great. I got down on the jet fuel soaked static mat and unscrewed the plate, with Jon constantly reminding me not to put my fingers in the fans, I reminded him that I was currently holding a screw driver and was prepared to use it on him. I carefully raised the plate, rescued the scared and dehydrated allen key and screwed everything back in place.

I now went around the AASTINO removing all the black-out cloth we had put up on the windows last Tuesday and we once again had a bright and sunny AASTINO. For something different to do, we decided to fill the inside 1200L fuel tanks. We have a little pump that pumps fuel from the outside tanks inside and a handy gauge that tells you when to stop filling (the handy gauge being someone shining a torch into the fuel tanks and watching the level). That task finished and high on the fumes of jetfuel,
Jon started testing the AWS and I started writing some software for Nigel.

Tomorrow morning the traverse is leaving so there was a bit of a French party going on tonight. We watched a DVD with the French which had three Antarctic stories on it, including footage of the traverse to Dome C, the station at Dome C and L'Astrolabe. Jon, Colin, Tony and the AASTINO all managed to get their faces on it and Tony was interviewed in the AASTINO.

- Suze