This was my first trip in a helicopter. I was a little nervous at first. The helicopter type is known as an A-Star. We had to label and weigh every one of our bags. They took our weight with our "carry-on" items (camera) too; time to see if the McMurdo food has me putting on any extra pounds. The weights are used for fuel calculations. We reported to the "passenger terminal" near the helicopter pads 45 minutes before the official flight time. There was a quick briefing and then we departed early. Once the pilot was ready we were escorted to the helipad.
Inside the helicopter we got seat belted in, this was actually a little difficult wearing our "Big Red", the large red ECW jacket. Once belted in I put on my helmet and clicked into the cabin comm system. We were able to talk to each other during flight, just not take-off and landing.
The flight to Linda was out of McMurdo station out to the Ross Ice Shelf and east of White Island. There are two maps below one showing the AWS locations and the other showing the satellite view of the region.
Here is a map showing all the AWS's that UW has on the continent. Note there are more but these are just the UW ones we service.
Photo Credit: http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/aws/documents/2017_AWS_Sites_UW_05_03_2017.pdf
Photo Credit: https://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/antarctic/mcmurdo_ice_shelf/maps/icons/annotated-map.jpg
The flight was a little bumpy out near White Island but not too bad. When we were about 3 miles out the Pilot told us. About 2 miles out the station came into view; a little stick in the vast sea of white.
We landed and got to work. First thing is to take some pictures of the site, then set out the Trimble GPS unit. Once the GPS was setup, powered and acquiring the location from the satellites we got to work on the electronics. Matthew worked on connecting to the station data logger while I wired in the new pressure sensor. It was quite difficult to handle the tiny screws and wires in gloves, so off they came. Occasionally Matthew and I had to take breaks to warm our hands. With the new gauge wired in, a few calls back to the lab on the satellite phone, and the program updated we had the new sensor working. Sounds easy here in the blog, but in the field even the easiest task takes 3 times as long. It is hard to work in 25mph winds, the cold and the wind chill. Anything that was set out gets coated in the blowing snow. Once we were able verify the data had been successfully transmitted via satellite back to UW and McMurdo we closed things up, took a few pictures and headed back to McMurdo.
On the trip back the Pilot took us between White Island and Black Island. There was less chop that way and the views were incredible. I saw a few seals around a few holes in the ice. The trip back between the islands was much higher to stay clear of the ASPA region for the seals. ASPA is Antarctica Specially Protected Area, which requires special permits to enter and do science stuff.
Here are some pictures from the trip.
Grwt shots and update. How long was the help flight?
ReplyDeleteReally cool pictures!
ReplyDelete