The Experiment

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This morning I got up in time for breakfast and got a good start to my day. I met Jason, who is the winterover science support tech at pole, at his office at 8:00 to plan for the day. We decided we would prep the site in the morning and hope that cargo would have time to bring the Thermos Flask Box out to the site in the afternoon. We walked over to Cargo and talked with Webster about bringing the flask out in the afternoon. We Borrowed a banana sled and a couple of shovels. Jason offered to pull the sled which was great because today is my second day here at Pole and I have not acclimatized yet. It is -52F out today with windchill, and Im surprised at how long I can work outside. Our first task was to locate and uncover the previous installation and locate the buried cabling. Digging at 10,500 feet at the cold temperatures was not really as bad as I thought. Jason and I were able to uncover the old box and cables and get the new location prepped. It took us about 1.5 hours to get everything ready for the new deployment. We walked back to the A.R.O. Building (Clean Air Building) and I met the NOAA scientists that are running the instrumentation there. I was able to get permission to go up the A.R.O. tower and up on the roof to take pictures overlooking the entire station. I took some photos from the roof of A.R.O. and then walked out to the runway to film the C-130 landing. Cargo informed us that they were able to move us up on their schedule and get the pallet out to the install site earlier. I met the loader out at the site at 2:45 and we placed the box. I removed the covers of both boxes and got everything prepped for the transfer of the thermal oil and the electronics payload. Everything went really smoothly the pumping process went well and everything worked when we plugged the cables back in.

That night I had a big meal and played some drums in the evening and then went to bed early around 8pm. I had a hard time sleeping given the altitude and the extremely dry air.

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Photos

The Old South Pole Dome
The dome will be taken down in the near future.

Installation site from last year
This site had a few feet of snow accumulation

Digging out the old box
Lots of digging at 10,500ft

Loader
Moving the crate

Box in Place and Wired up
Everything is working

Climbing in Bunny Boots
Climbing up the Tower at ARO

At the top of the Tower
Up the Tower - dome in the background on the left

Yes I am having a good time
Digging can be fun

Man Haulin'
My Rig.

Comments

[Rachael]

looks cccollllddd
Is that reall you under all that beard??