Science and Engineering at The University of Edinburgh |
||||
|
||||
![[University Logo]](/icons/unilogo_25476c.gif "Link to The University of Edinburgh Home Page"){kind=icon}
Blog Archive - November 200730th NovemberI managed to diagnose and repair the cause of the total loss of power in the radar system experienced yesterday. Two wires had snapped due to a combination of the cold and pressure from the lid of the box they were housed in. This took 5 hours, a lot of head-scratching and some very cold fingers, however. I now know the inside of the receiver box intimately. Andy has continued to battle with the engine and the pump for the hot water drill, whilst Dan and John have continued the installation of the glaciopoles survey network across the lake and the discovery and re-measurement of the Chilean GPS survey points installed in January 2006. 29th November I took DELORES out to the testing area just under 1 km from the camp and began the configuration tests necessary to evaluate the system. Just as I was about to press the ‘record logging’ button, however, I heard the fan on the onboard computer cut out. Investigation revealed a total absence of power to the system (not even to the solar panel regulator) – back to camp for further investigation. 28th November After thinking that I had solved the power problems with the radar system, I configured DELORES in full survey mode and went out for a trial run to collect some data. This showed that some modification to the towrope system was necessary and that, because of the cold weather, it will be necessary to install some additional battery power for the system to power the onboard computer, the amplifiers, the laptop and the GPS. Not exactly a complete success. 27th November Further problems with the radar – it is quite apparent that the batteries don’t like the cold – somehow their voltage had managed to go down over the period of the last 4 days, despite being connected to three 40 Watt solar panels. 23rd-26th November I spoke too soon. The weather for the last 4 days has been atrocious (wind speeds of 25+ knots and drifting snow – highest gust speed of 33 knots) so we have been confined to the tents. Visibility has been limited to less than 50 metres at times. Dan and I have only dared to venture out to sample Andy and John’s whisky and cut the occasional snow blocks (an essential ingredient for making tea of course!). Nothing much to report, except that John made us each read an appalling novel set in Antarctica (it was bearable if you imagined that the baddie was Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races/Catch the Pigeon). I won’t name the author or title, but I will say that it had certain connections with subglacial lake exploration. Be warned all members of the Lake Ellsworth consortium – John is considering sending copies to all of you!!!! He has at least one spare copy…… Regular readers of this blog will know that I am partial to sampling exemplary contributions to the world of fine baking/desert making. Jean, I’m sorry, but you need to be warned that your biscuits have serious competition for the title of finest contribution to a Lake Ellsworth lie-up day from the superb Ma Lewis' famous chocolate fudge cake made by Andy (from a recipe by Ma Lewis). I thought that I had made my own great contribution to the culinary world over the last few days – the development of hot chocolate porridge. Unfortunately Andy has prevented me from going public with this recipe by claiming that he invented this dish several seasons ago. 22nd November Much better conditions weather-wise, but ongoing status of the radar electronics/hot water drill remains poor. A second day of cursing into the metal receiver box for me. John and Dan have had more success as they began the installation of the grid of 42 survey poles (yes – you did read that right, Douglas Adams fans) that we will use to measure the rate at which the ice sheet flows over the lake. 21st November Bad weather. High winds (20 knots +) meant that today was a lie-up day (otherwise known as sit in your own, or your neighbours’, tent and drink vast quantities of tea). Although this meant a well-earned rest and the chance to partake in some excellent home-baked ginger biscuits courtesy of one of John’s former students (thank you Jean, they were delicious), it also meant that Andy was able to practice his highly disturbing Gollum impression on the rest of us. We can but hope that the weather is better tomorrow! 20th November Well, we have finally had it confirmed……….it gets pretty cold down here. The weather station recorded a nighttime temperature of –31.5 degrees C last night. Surprisingly both Dan and I agreed that we didn’t think it felt that cold in comparison to the previous nights before the weather station (now known as ‘Suzanne’) was installed. This could be for two reasons, the first is that our re-pitched tent is much warmer, or secondly that it was actually much colder last week. Dan and I took a vote on the matter and quickly (and unanimously) decided that the latter was the case. 
The radar is already starting to cause me some problems. Most of today was spent with my
head in the metal receiver box as I installed the various components that make the thing
work. Hugh and Mark have done an excellent job in the design and build of the radar
system, but that didn’t stop me from swearing constantly (I even out-competed the other
members of the field team on this score today, even those putting the hot water drill
together) as I rewired bits of cable. Although these were soft and malleable in Cambridge
at temperatures of –25 degrees C they become rigid and are rather more problematic to
work with.Dan and John put out two GPS receiver stations today (one at the top of the lake and one where the ice sheet overlies bedrock rather than water). We are hoping that the data from these might be able to give us a hold on whether a tidal signal can be detected from Lake Ellsworth (any tides in the lake will cause the ice sheet surface to move up and down – but only by extremely small amounts, perhaps by 8-10 mm at most). The GPS team reported that the ice-surfaces of the ‘off-lake’ areas are characterised by lots of large sastrugi. This is very bad news for the radar surveys as it means that we will have to travel pretty slowly whilst collecting data. It will make for a very uncomfortable ride! The solar panels and batteries are now installed around camp. This means that we now have power in the tents – allowing us to recharge laptops, satellite phones, cameras and MP3 players! All of which are essential to allow me to write, illustrate and send this blog! 19th November We started to piece together the science kit today. While I worked on putting together the transmitter sledge for the radar, John installed the GPS base station at camp, Andy put up the automatic weather station (which recorded a daytime temperature of –23 degrees C), and, perhaps most challengingly, Dan got the skidoos working after 8 months of storage in Punta Arenas! 18th November The real work has now begun. In an attempt to make the place at least look like a science camp, we spent today moving metal boxes around and arranging them in lines (known as depots). As well as making the place look neat and tidy, the aim of this exercise was to minimise the risk of items becoming ‘drifted in’ with snow, and to make sure that when they do, things are easier to find and dig out. Dan and I moved home tonight (well about 10-20 metres uplake really). Our re-pitched tent is now much higher (no longer is it more than half a metre below the snow surface), has much more space, and, most importantly perhaps, feels much warmer. At night we celebrated Kenny (the Genny)’s birthday, by opening the package that he had kindly given to Andy as he departed for the field. We are happy to report that it was opened (as well as drunk and eaten) in a timely and appropriate manner! Thank you Kenny, it was all delicious. We know just how much worse it could have been! 17th November Despite some high winds that caused some initial delays (more likely the pilots’ excuse to have a leisurely breakfast at Patriot Hills – rumour has it that at Patriots you can find fresh food – avocados!!!! - and cans of beer (insert your own favourite Homer Simpson sound effect here)) the final two Twin Otters arrived at 1 pm today, carrying even more equipment, but most importantly carrying Andy and John. The field team now comprises its full complement of 4 people. As the last plane (and people) we will see for 2 months departed, we were all grateful that we wouldn’t have to unload another skidoo from a Twin Otter for a while. Lets just say that they are a pretty tight squeeze and even with 4 people they are pretty heavy!  Once the planes had gone the first thing we did was put on a brew, which then turned into two (it’s a hard life down here). Unfortunately we were unable to fulfil John’s demands for fresh avocados, but we did manage a biscuit or two. Once we had prised them out of our tent (I suspect the pair of them became too used to a life of luxury at Patriot Hills) Andy and John put their tent up. They did an OK job (possibly slightly better than ours), and their clever use of foam to insulate the floor of their tent made us think it was perhaps time to improve our own real estate (four pairs of hands rather than just two make this a significantly easier job). Horrifically, Andy has reported that one of the goodies box contains a giant stilton cheese given to him by the chef at Rothera. I am now officially on strike until a Twin Otter returns to take either it, or me, away. 16th November It has been a really busy day at Ellsworth International Airport today. We had 7 Twin Otter flights worth of equipment from Patriot Hills (3 from Nico and Andy W., 3 from Steve and Ali and one from Doug C and Rich B) to unload. At one point we had one plane taking off, one unloading and one circling waiting to land! Co-pilot Ali was good enough to bring Dan and I an apple from Patriots – what a star. We now have a considerable amount of our scientific equipment (DELORES the radar, GPS stations, and some of the seismic kit) here at the field camp, as well as our skidoos and sledges. These are all far less important than the apple! We also now have a washing up bowl (well, an empty cracker box at least) that means we can do the washing up inside the tent and won’t run the risk of frostbite anymore. The dangers of doing your dirty dishes outside was something I didn’t think of putting in the risk assessment! The day was rounded off by a most impressive halo around the sun – a bit like a circular rainbow. 15th November The morning radio sched with Rothera provided some surprising news that we certainly weren’t expecting – the Twin Otters are coming!!! Two planes were expected today, bringing equipment (scientific and general kit) to the field site as well as taking Andy and John to Patriot Hills to sort out the kit that was delivered there. The two planes will then be stationed at Patriot Hills (just under an hours flight away) for the next couple of days while they do shuttle runs until the equipment deliveries are complete. The weather today was very pleasant – it being much warmer (relatively speaking anyway) and calm. We even managed to have our lunch outside (tomato soup on the veranda!), so I took the opportunity to write some postcards to send back to Rothera with the planes. 14th November Our first proper lie-up day. Dan and I hardly left the tent all day due to high winds and persistent snow. We did, however, manage to make ourselves walk the 300 m along the skiway just to get some fresh air. It is a good job that we didn’t spend more than a couple of hours digging out the sastrugi on the skiway a couple of days ago, the drifting snow today has filled in most of the bumps. It is difficult even to make out the area that we levelled! Ah well, it did mean some exercise! 13th November The hunt for the Chilean stakes continues, with an even greater degree of success! We have managed to find a set of three wooden stakes (unfortunately not the type that come from four legged animals). However, finding them does not suggest that we will find the rest of them. The top of the first of the three that we found was absolutely flush with the snow surface, whilst the other two were buried by about 20 cm of snow (we only found them by pacing distances from the first and luckily kicking the right piece of snow away). When they were installed in January 2006, they were 80-90 cm above the snow surface, which means that there has been a reasonably high level of snow accumulation for this part of the ice sheet since then. Like the bamboo we found yesterday they don’t appear to have moved more than 1-2 m since they were installed, which suggests a very slow rate of ice flow over the lake. Because of bad weather around Rothera it looks unlikely that we will expect any more planeloads of equipment until Friday (16th Nov) at the earliest. Dan and I will be starting to run out of exciting tasks (i.e. hunting the survey stakes) well before then. Hopefully our ipod batteries will last that long! We managed to have a group radio sched with Sledge India (Rutford Ice Stream) and Sledge Kilo (Pine Island Glacier) today. In contrast to the frugal existence that Dan and I have been pursuing this week (mainly sleeping, eating and reading), both these field teams have their science kit and have been able to get started with their work. Ed (Sledge India) reported that he had spotted the large Illyushin plane that carried the Lake Ellsworth science equipment into Patriot Hills on the 9th November (the same day that we flew in) as it flew over the RABID depot. Julian (Sledge Kilo) reported that the weather station at the Pine Island Glacier site recorded –33 degrees C one night last week. They are camped about 1500 m below us here at Lake Ellsworth. I told you it was cold. 12th November Reporting out attempts to find ‘Chilean stakes’ on our morning radio sched led to great hilarity in the Operations Tower at Rothera, who suspected that we had already gone completely mad and were searching for Chilean steaks. Oh how this made us dream of Cyril’s cooking rather than the boil in the bag meals we have for dinner each night out here. It is going to be a long 3 months…….. For some exercise, but mainly because the pilots had suggested that it might make for a less bumpy landing, we tried to flatten the sastrugi on the skiway today. Armed with only a spade each, however, this proved to be a significant task, mainly because the skiway is 300m in length and about 50 m wide. We did our best! We went looking for another survey stake today, this time to the southwest of camp. Although we didn’t find the one we were searching for, we did find the top 20 cm of a bamboo, which marked a point along the Chilean scientists traverse from Patriot Hills to Lake Ellsworth. Certainly a partial success, its current position indicated that ice flow in the area is probably in the order of 1-2 m per annum. The weather has remained cold (we don’t yet have a thermometer, but we estimate approx –25 to –30 degrees C), whilst the sunshine we have enjoyed for the last couple of days has been replaced by increasing levels of cloud cover, which has partly obscured the Ellsworth Mountains. 11th November Something of a lazy Sunday. After the morning radio sched with Rothera we fell back asleep, waking up at 1300 hrs. Well, it has been a busy couple of days! In the afternoon we attempted our first science of the campaign – a search for a set of wooden survey stakes that had been installed by Chilean scientists in January 2006. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the ones in the direction of the Ellsworth Mountains, perhaps because they were buried by snow accumulation in the past year and a half. The low contrast, which might have made them difficult to spot, may also have played a role. Perhaps a revisit will be required later in the week. John arrived at Rothera yesterday. All we need to do now is get him and Andy down to Patriot Hills to sort the 5 tons of science equipment and send it to us here at Lake Ellsworth. 10th November Today involved yet more digging, as we quickly decided that the most important task of the day was putting up the toilet tent. When it is -25 degrees C and windy this quickly becomes a priority! During our daily radio schedule with Rothera we were advised that we should expect a planeload of equipment to arrive in the afternoon, so we had to find and mark a suitable runway (known down here as a skiway because the Twin Otters have skis to allow them to land on snow). Although the weather was perfect for the plane to land almost throughout the day, just as we spotted the Twin Otter on the horizon the contrast deteriorated rapidly making it difficult for the pilot (Nico) to pick out the wind blown humps and bumps on the surface (sastrugi). Fortunately for us, Nico (with James as co-pilot) put the Twin Otter down without any apparent difficulty and we unloaded lots of useful kit (i.e. skidoo covers and sledges……but no skidoos). Because of the low temperatures we are finding that the batteries for most of our equipment (including our iridium phones and laptops) are draining very quickly. There is only one option to solve this until Andy and John arrive with the big batteries and solar panels…..to keep them warm we are going to have to put them in our sleeping bags and sleep with them. The same goes for all our baby wipes (the only way to wash until we set up the hot water drill tank) and our moisturisers (the only way to avoid your skin drying up and cracking in the cold) which are currently frozen solid. Because I forgot to say yesterday….... we have an absolutely incredible view of the Ellsworth Mountain Range, which are 70 km to the northeast. We haven’t quite figured out which one is Mount Vinson though. 9th November Greetings from Lake Ellsworth! Well to be more precise, greetings from the surface of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, 3.2 km above Subglacial Lake Ellsworth. First things first, it is very cold! My hopes of avoiding temperatures below –30 degrees C by heading into the field slightly later than the other deep-field parties have certainly been dealt a significant blow. Being a long way south (79 degrees south) and at a reasonable elevation (ca. 1910 m) certainly doesn’t help. Dan and I (with pilot Geoff and co-pilot Riet) were lucky enough to have absolutely dingle weather throughout the 6 hour flight from Rothera to Lake Ellsworth. We stopped en-route for fuel at Sky-Blu (an amazing place that looks like a small outpost of the Rebel base in the Empire Strike Back - distinctly unworldly). The second leg of the journey was even more impressive with a series of mountain peaks (known as nunataks) protruding through the surface of the ice sheet. There were also the reminders of how unforgiving the Antarctic environment could be. There were several deep, wide fissures in the ice surface (crevasses) large enough to swallow a double-decker bus. Luckily we aren’t expecting any of these around Lake Ellsworth. Because the weather was so good we were lucky enough to fly directly over the Ellsworth Mountains rather than having to skirt round them. This produced enough top quality photos to illustrate a glaciology textbook, with valley glaciers snaking between mountainous peaks, before they join the Rutford Ice Stream. Geoff even flew us over Mount Vinson (4,800 m) the highest mountain in Antarctica, which, because the Twin Otters are unpressurised led to a mild case of altitude sickness for yours truly. We eventually arrived at Lake Ellsworth at about 1700 hrs, but we didn’t get into our sleeping bags for another 7 hours! Once the plane was unloaded and Dan made sure that the radio worked, the plane departed leaving the two of us in the middle of absolutely nowhere with a big pile of equipment and a pyramid tent to put up. Putting up a tent in Antarctica can involve an awful lot of digging of snow to make sure that there is no likelihood that the tent will blow away in high winds. As well as making sure that we had shelter for the night we also wanted to make sure that our equipment wasn’t going anywhere so we had to put up a smaller dome tent to house it. Because there was only the two of us, this took some time. Eventually we got into our sleeping bags at one in the morning with the sun still high in the sky. That didn’t make it any warmer though. Brrrrrr. | ||
|
||
