Received: from edu.au by redrock.nevada.edu (5.65c/M1.4) with SMTP id ; Sat, 9 Jan 1993 05:37:06 -0800 Received: from edu.au by edu.au with SMTP id AA09994 (5.65+/IDA-1.3.5/LTU-1.0 for CHIPPER@REDROCK.NEVADA.EDU); Sun, 10 Jan 93 00:36:43 +1100 Received: from edu.au by edu.au (PMDF #2779 ) id <01GTC1WVHQVK94E510@edu.au>; Sun, 10 Jan 1993 00:36:54 +1000 Date: 10 Jan 1993 00:36:54 +1000 From: "Paul R Smith - Electronic Engineering, LaTrobe Uni" Subject: Letter to students To: CHIPPER Message-Id: <01GTC1WVIA6A940@latrobe.edu.au> X-Envelope-To: CHIPPER@REDROCK.NEVADA.EDU X-Vms-To: CHIP Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Howdy Chip, Just read your compilation of all those letters. You might have to help me out on a couple, such as who are the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins and Pirates? Never mind, baseball or football I guess. Phew, a lot of questions... I got back from field training yesterday, had a fantastic time, it was great to get out there and camp for a night and ski, abseil and go down crevasses and lots of other stuff. Today I got to go for a flight around Casey and the surrounds. The Japanese photographers are still with us so the Canadian pilots were taking people for joyflights, it's magic up there, all the icebergs floating around the coast, then the low rocky areas with snow rising up to a plateau that disappears off into the horizon in unbroken whiteness. It was very clear today so if you didn't have your shades on it was BRIGHT! Anyway, on with the show... ----------------------------- Dear Class, Thanks for taking the time to write and I'm sorry this is a group letter to you all but it's a bit easier to answer repeated questions in one go, I'll try not to leave to many unanswered. First I'll tell you a bit about myself since some of you were curious about that. I'm 24 years old and in my first year of my PhD doing electronic engineering at Latrobe university. For most of the time I live in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne is the capital city for the state of Victoria which is in the southeastern corner of Oz (abbr. for Australia). For now I'm single and don't have any kids which suits me cause I like to travel around a lot and there's plenty of the world left to see yet! I got the chance to go to Antarctica because the area I work in has to do with the ionosphere and they are putting in a new instrument here to make measurments of the ionosphere and what it does (such as how it moves and changes shape during different times of the day). Basically they are putting in a big radio transmitter to send radio pulses up to the ionosphere and then listen to the echos that come back, a lot like the way radar works really. From the echos we can get a lot of information, so my project is to help set this thing, called an ionosonde, up. Anyway, enough of that... The weather here for the last few weeks has been great. It's summer down here now and because we are so far south there is daylight 24 hours a day. The sun does set at around midnight and is back up a couple of hours later but there is still plenty of light to see by. It's weird because it's often much later than you realise so you need to keep checking your watch since it's not possible to judge time by the amount of light outside. The sky's been sunny and blue for most of the time, which means sunglasses are a must when outside because the reflection off the snow is so bright. We had one long snow shower the other day where it went grey and looked just like a fog rolled in. One of the most amazing things when you get away from everything is how quiet it is. There is nothing at all to make noise, no people, planes cars or anything, it's a bizarre after a while. Once it gets to February I'm told we can expect more blizzards and high winds (it can get to over 130 knots). The temperature when out in the sun is over 0 deg C, often around 5, but this drops fast when there is wind. I think the lows in summer are around -10 deg Celcius. Some people thought it may get boring here. In the winter that might be the case when there's a bliz and you can't get outside but during fine weather, no way, there's heaps to do. We work a normal week so sometimes I am doing stuff on computers, other times I might be surveying the site we want to locate the antennas for the ionosonde, draining "the swamp" as we call it that's nearby (we already did it once but the snow melted and filled it up again). When it's good to go outside we get as much done as possible since this time is limited. Outside of work there's many trips to various places to go on (they're called "jollies" , don't ask me why). I came back from field training the other day where they teach you how to get around the terrain, climb icy hills, go abseiling (down cliffs) and prussiking (up cliffs). They also let you down into a crevass, which is a big crack in the ice of a glacier. This was a great experience, like going into another world with icicles hanging everywhere and a beautiful blue colour coming out of the ice. Cold and wet too and they can be very dangerous if they are covered in snow because you can't see them as you walk along. People have been killed when they've fallen through the snow and into a crevass, so we also get taught the techniques for roping ourselves together and what to do to get someone out who has fallen in. The cross country skiing is really good around here so I've been doing some of that. In some of the bays, the sea has frozen into a thick , flat sheet (called, not surprisingly, sea-ice) which is good to ski across. The main types of wildlife near here are Adelie penguins and birds (Skuas, petrels and lots of others I don't know). The penguins are the greatest, whenever you're out in the field and these guys spot you they come running up or sliding up on their bellies to have a look at you. This is the first time I've had wildlife actually want to run up and take a closer look at me, so we say hello and take a few pictures and eventually the novelty wears off and the penguins drift away. Really makes us feel like tourists. There are a few other types of penguin around but I've only saw them from the ship on the way down here. Oh yeah, there are seals too, but all I've seen them do is lay around on the ice and soak up the sun. Plant life seems limited to moss and lichen and some tough species of grass, no trees or bushes which is a bonus when skiing, although rocks are still a problem, and the odd 100 foot drop. The base is called Casey and has been rebuilt recently so it's new and very comfortable. There are around 60 to 70 people here during the summer and I think 19 are staying for winter. I leave here on the last ship in March and there won't be another until November, in between is winter and the conditions are too bad to get anything through so after that the people who stay here are on their own. There are scientists (nicknamed "boffins"), carpenters ("chippys"), mechanics ("diesos" for diesel mechanic), electricians ("sparkys"), communications people, builders, cooks and a few others. Everyone gets along quite well, which is a good thing because there aren't too many places to go to get away from everyone. There are also glaciologists ("glacios") who are drilling in the icepack about 110km away from Casey. I don't think we see much of them until it's time for the summer people to go. Well the Swiss physicist I work with has just come back from a jolly to and island with penguin colonies on it so I better go see what he wants. He's a crazy dude but it's a lot of fun here. Hope this has been interesting for you, bye for now Paul