First of all, despite what this blog site might list above, Antarctica is not a part of South America. It is its own continent with land underneath all of its ice and mountains. Just thought I should make that correction. This morning I pulled up Romeo from dive hut #8 out on the sea ice, where it had been resting on the sea floor, 80 feet below. Ben the Antarctic Scout, helped me with some wiring, logistics, and this pressure test before leaving for New Harbor today. He and I drove out to Hut 8 lst night around 9:30 after I [View Full Entry]

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Its been a while since i have posted anything, sorry about that. Work has been really busy with assembly, programming and integration of the various parts of the underwater camera system. The radio antenna tower at New Harbor is going to be installed on Weds, and the fiber optic cable conduit is still intact! I am playing a show at Gallaghers pub tonight which will be a lot of fun. Joe Mastroianni left yesterday, and he is lucky he got out. Right after the C-17 took off some weather moved in and I woke up this morning to snow blowing all [View Full Entry]

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These are some recent pictures from the ice wall at New Harbor. This is the location where the communications cable transitions out of the ice and into the water. Romeo is placed roughly 100 feet from the wall. Photos courtesy of Henry Kaiser. Click on to see the second image [View Full Entry]

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Happy Halloween everyone! Here are two photos from last night's halloween party on station. It was a really great party with lots of creative costumes. We did really well, and the "its a harsh condiment" (a pun on the saying "its a harsh continent") won the best group costume. This means we get to go on a snowmobile boondoggle to the room with a view. The room with a view is situated somewhere between Mount Erebus and Scott Base and supposedly has an amazing view (hence the name). Anyway I hope that we can schedule the trip before I leave for [View Full Entry]

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I havent uploaded anything to this blog for the past 5 days or so because I have been spending my evenings working on my Halloween costume. The great thing about Halloween in Antarctica is that people get really creative with the resources on station. We have been dumpster diving for steel cargo banding, paint, glue, old colored sheets and other items that were destined for recycling or a landfill back home. Sandwich (otherwise known as Allison) came up with the great idea to do a group costume themed around the saying 'it's a harsh continent', although we changed it to "it's [View Full Entry]

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Well I am now in New Zealand, my time in Antarctica is over - For now. My last days were spent saying good-by to my new friends and packing my bags. The flight was nearly empty because a South Pole bound flight had to 'boomerang' because it was too cold to land at the pole (anything less that -50 F and the planes will freeze to the ground and start having other problems). We entered the cavernous interior of the C-17 and took our seats in the folding seats lining the side of the plane - The flight down was a [View Full Entry]

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So after weather delays and fuel tank leaks I finally made it down. It is great to see friends and to be back in this crazy place. Joe and I got stuck in building 155 (which is a dorm usually for transients, and is less desirable than other dorms) - the station is at capacity so we will make do. The two backpack cameras I built for the penguin researchers are still outside on the roof of the Crary laboratory and seem to be working. They will be installed at one of the penguin colonies on weds. [View Full Entry]

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The cameras that we made for the penguin research group have been on the roof of the Crary Lab for the past week. Today we brought them in, inspected them and then as the weather turned sour, I decided to put one out to see how it would get along with the wind. Its condition 2 right now with gusts up to 50 mph, snow blowing all over the place and temps are down to about -19C. Its pretty awesome. I posted a stitched panorama that was taken by one of the cameras on the roof a few days ago. [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from Antarctica! The last several weeks have been filled with lots of work, several small adventures and lots of good-byes. The summer season is now underway and the planes are bringing more and more people every day - McMurdo’s population is around 1000 now and more will be showing up soon. It has been a lot of fun having the runway so close to town, because the planes can be clearly seen landing and taking off. Most of the winter-over crew has gone north with only a few of us remaining. I have said good-bye to most of my friends [View Full Entry]

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It was a beautiful day - The sun was shining brightly over the western slopes of Mt Erebus, there was no wind to speak of and the temperature was warm by Antarctic standards. We were cruising at between five and ten miles per hour towards the North. We had been underway for over an hour and we still had another half hour to go before we reached our destination. Our route took us to the west of the Erebus Glacier Ice Tongue, which is a large, narrow glacier flowing down from the frozen slopes of Mt. Erebus that extends off of [View Full Entry]

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