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Published: January 5th 2009
Arrival Heights
This place is off limits to everyone unless you have written permission. Since our magnetometer is here, we got to go. Today I had more training sessions. 8 a.m. brought me an awareness of the environment here, and taught me how to dispose of my urine. That was followed by a trip to the Berg Field Center (BFC) to get a space heaters for our enclosure to thaw the batteries and ice jugs and to prevent freezing and condesation on the all-sky camera lense that we will be installing. Then came a trip to the S S C to get a how to on generator operation and a generator for our space heater.
Lunch was next, if I recall correctly, then a trip out to Arrival Heights to check on an old magnetometer that has bad axis. Hyomin and I opened the vault, tested the wires and whatnot, and found out that the coil itself was bad. Not a good sign. By the way, this is the most massive magnetometer I have ever seen. It's freakin HUGE!
Back to check on the generator, run a few errands, then catch a Delta out to Williams (Willy) Field. Once there, we asked a cargo guy to get our box and put it into place, but in trying to find a level spot,
The Magnetometer
Giant. About 10 times bigger than the regular ones I build. It even has a pressure valve -- it must be filled with dry nitrogen to keep it from corroding. we ended up getting the giant machine stuck in the ice and it had to be pulled out by another giant machine. Quite impressive.
But also frustrating. A null day yesterday and probably another wasted day today because the ice won't lie flat. While figuring things out, we went back to McMurdo to eat supper, bring Hyomin to bag drag for his flight to South Pole tomorrow morning, and take a tour of discovery hut, which I missed because I had to call fleet operations at the airport to get a bulldozer to level the ground out.
At 8 p.m. we went back out to Willy to manage the bulldozing and raking and hopefully start some actual work, but the ice was to soft and turned to powder so we had to wait for it to freeze. Then the plower dude came and told us we cannot install anything without permission from fleet operations, lest our operations interfere with air traffic control. All in all, nothing done and some more hoops to jump through. Should get a good start tomorrow, though.
When i got back to McMurdo, I went on the Discovery Hut loop to see some more of the gorgeousness that is Antarctica.
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Jayme
non-member comment
Question
How many people are there with you? I mean..you got 9th place? That means that there are atleast 8 people there that run a faster than 7 minute mile. There aren't even that many people in the entire city of Spring Valley that can run that fast..So either there are a lot more people there than I thought or the few people that are there are really fast nerds.