Received: from latrobe.edu.au by redrock.nevada.edu (5.65c/M1.4) with SMTP id ; Mon, 18 Jan 1993 07:19:18 -0800 Received: from latrobe.edu.au by latrobe.edu.au with SMTP id AA05640 (5.65+/IDA-1.3.5/LTU-1.0 for chipper@redrock.nevada.edu); Tue, 19 Jan 93 02:18:32 +1100 Received: from latrobe.edu.au by latrobe.edu.au (PMDF #2779 ) id <01GTOQ3QNEDS8WW20O@latrobe.edu.au>; Tue, 19 Jan 1993 02:18:38 +1000 Date: 19 Jan 1993 02:18:38 +1000 From: "Paul R Smith - Electronic Engineering, LaTrobe Uni" Subject: the latest To: chipper Message-Id: <01GTOQ3QNO0Y8WW20O@lure.latrobe.edu.au> X-Envelope-To:chipper@redrock.nevada.edu, X-Vms-To: @GENERAL Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT 17-1-93 Hi folks, Just thought I'd let you know I'm still alive and well and tell you about some of the things happening in and around Casey. Today being sunday most people are taking it easy, myself included, although I've been checking out some software that came with the DPS (digisonde portable sounder) trying to figure out how it works since the documentation is pretty woefull. We had a BBQ at lunchtime and a really nice day for it too. Sunny and at least a balmy 5 degrees above zero. As long as the wind isn't blowing that's really quite pleasant to be out in because the air doesn't have any moisture in it to add to the cold. As with all good Aussie BBQs the meat had a good coating of carbon on it! People were making jokes about the "ufo" we saw last night, a strange bright light in the sky. When someone pointed it out to me I looked up and saw a bright white disc, a bit like looking at the moon only much smaller. It turned out it was a large weather balloon with some kind of cosmic ray measurement equipment on it. It wasn't going anywhere so there mustn't have been much wind up there. This was a change from a few days ago when it was blowing better than 60 knots (about 120 km/h) for over 3 days. That's the amazing thing about this place, how fast the weather can change. And I thought Melbourne was bad! Last weekend and the two days before it I had a fantastic time. Field training was on the thursday and friday where we learnt how to climb and descend icy slopes, slide down them and then try and stop (self arrest) using our trusty ice axes. The axe is T-shaped with a long shaft and a sharp point at the bottom (I knew this already cause we were shown a slide of someone who had an accident and drove one through his leg...not the recommended way to use it!) and a flattened part on one side of the T and a point on the other. Self arrest was great, you throw yourself down a steep slope and try to roll over and dig the pointed side of the T into the snow while lifting your legs, leaning on the shaft of the axe, keeping your head up and usually yelling out something. I was a natural at yelling something interesting but did also manage to stop myself in time. After that we learnt how to rope ourselves together and simulated what to do if one or other of us suddenly fell through the snow and into a crevass. Since there was an odd number of people my partner was another ice axe stuck into the ground and I couldn't pull the thing out, which was just as well cause it would have catapulted out of the ground at roughly the speed of light with the amount I was pulling on the rope. We were back at Casey for lunch then went out in the Haggalunds, which are a wonderful Swedish invention that looks essentially like a red box on two tank treads. This is the best way for travelling across the snow with lots of people and equipment. The Haaglunds took us out to a camping spot about 3km away from Casey where we set up the snow tents, and cooked some food, and checked in by radio. It was a beautiful evening, lots of light, clear skies and no wind so some of us decided to go for a ski across the sea ice of O'Brians Bay that we were camping near. Out there, surrounded by the cliffs of snow, it was so quiet and there was just this amazing feeling while skiing across the flat surface. I know one of those feelings was hope the ice was thick enough, but the field training officer assured me it was about 10 meters. The next day were abseiling down some ice cliffs which was a lot of fun and prussicking back up them, which was hard work. After that we walked over to a well known crevass and our FTO set up a ladder so we could climb down inside and check out the insides of a glacier. It was like another world down there, cool and blue with icicles of all sizes hanging down and making lots of dripping sounds (it was another sunny day). We found out it was quite deep too when one of our party lost his helmet (he claimed it was strapped on tight) and down it went out of sight. It was rescued later in a practice SAR (search and rescue) exercise. The next day I was lucky enough to have my name pulled out in a ballot to go up for a joyflight (airborne jolly?) in the twin Otter airplane that the Canadian pilots were flying the Japanese photographers around in. What can I say, the coastline from the air was spectacular, hundreds of icebergs floating slowly out to sea and we made a few low passes over Casey. The landing "strip" is prepared packs snow up on the plateau above the station they call S1, so the airplane lands on skis. On Sunday the biologists wanted to go out and collect some lichen and other specimens of flora (limited to mosses and algae basically) from some of the islands down the coast. To get there they use Zodiaks, which are those air filled dingies that have outboard engines and are the greatest way to travel over water (being smooth helps) and they needed some extra people to help balance them so I offered my services as ballast. On arriving at the first island (name forgotten) the bios were off looking at slimy green patches and the rest of us went to "play" with the penguins. I may have mentioned this before but the way the Adelie penguins react to human presence is to come running up for a closer look, sometimes from great distances (we once watched one group appear on the horizon and take 20 minutes to reach us just so they could look us over for 5 mins and then take off back the way they came). When the bios had finished we went out to an ice floe to have a look at a Weddel seal that was lying out in the sun.Mark steered us in for a closer look and just when we were going to turn off the engine quit (we'd been having some problems with it all day). Since I was at the bow of the zodiak I got a very close up view indeed, let me tell you seal breath is not a real nice thing to smell. Meanwhile behind me Mark was using some carefully chosen words to help him restart the engine and after exchanging names and addresses with Mr Seal we fired up the engine and got out of there. I think we were more stressed out by it than the seal was, who only looked at us with big curious eyes and rolled around a bit. For the rest of the day we went to Hollin island where I climbed to the top and had a snooze in the sun with a fantastic view spread out in front and then back onto the mainland to visit one of the remote huts (about 13km from Casey), called Robbo's, which sleeps 4 and people can visit for a bit of a holiday. By the time we got back home it was 10.30pm and a beautiful pink sunset was in progress, lighting up the clouds from underneath. Not a bad way to spend a sunday I thought. 18-1-93 For the past week Didier, the physicist who's wintering here, and I have been hard at work trying to drain and keep dry the area where the transmitting antennas for the DPS are being put up. I thought everything down here was either snow, ice or rock but down in the hollow area at the base of the hill there is mud and lots of it and it really stinks! There's a black layer not far below the surface that really reeks and I wouldn't even want to speculate about what it is, anyway we now call it the swamp. Today most of the main central tower, which will be over 45 meters tall, was lifted up by crane and guyed down. This ended up being quite a spectacle with most of the people on station coming down to take pictures (saying stuff like "wouldn't that look spectacular if it fell over"). Well it didn't (thankfully) so I'll be spending most of the rest of the week helping the army riggers with the hard job of getting up the other 5 sections that need to be attached to the top. It already looks very tall and stands out on the skyline so when the top third goes on I'll see if I have enough nerve to go up and take a picture. Lloyd, the engineer wintering here, has the unenviable job of having to go up there during winter to check out if the resistor load box that sits at the top is ok. One of the big things here is "Sunday night at the movies". In a room called the Odeon there's a couple of projectors and a big blank wall and a stock of old movies which are shown on sundays and wednesdays. So far we've seen Pride and Prejudice, a musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and a few others. Mostly it's funny just to sit there and listen to all the comments people make. On sunday however they advertised a sci-fi double of "Target Earth" and "Conquest of Space" neither of which I had seen. I soon found out why, they were the BADDEST most corny 50's B grade sci-fi movies I have *ever* seen! Words cannot describe the degree of awfulness involved here. In Target Earth they killed the invading robots (it took them half the movie to work out they were robots and not people even though these things were clanking away down the street) by finding a sound frequency that cracked their cathode ray tube face plates...AARRRGHHHHHHH! Conquest of Space was about a trip to Mars by the Space Corps who were one of the most inept military forces I've seen (barring maybe the ones fighting the robots in Target Earth). Needless to say it was all great fun. That's about it for now, I'll keep you posted about any interesting trips that happen along although we'll all be busy with the DPS and antennas for a while longer. Later people! Paul