Thu, 2 Dec 1999

I'm in Christchurch, NZ at the Antarctic Center. All of our equipment has made it here, but most is still in the process of being ferried to the South Pole. We always stay behind it if possible, to pester the cargo people to move it along. It looks like the Air National Guard and National Science Foundation C-130 planes are all in the Antarctic, and the Kiwi (New Zealand) Air Force is doing the flights between Christchurch (CHCH) and MacMurdo Station, Antarctica (MCM). Unfortunately, one of their planes was just sent to East Timor, so things are backed up a bit. We are on the manifest for the second flight out of here, the flight yesterday was cancelled due to weather in MCM so hopefully they will get off today. With luck that plane will return tomorrow and we will get off on Sat. (remember that we are a day ahead). But with the Antarctic weather, everything can change for flight plans.

Sometimes flights leave Christchurch and turn around if they are before the point of no return en route to MCM, as they don’t have the fuel capacity to fly the whole round trip without landing. So if the weather looks likes it's getting worse in MCM they often don't fly at all to minimize these 'boomerang' flights.

It's approaching summer here in Christchurch - that means the kids are done with school for the year and it is Christmas time. I always laugh how Southern Hemisphere life is reversed. Not only is the sun in the NORTH, but the right water tap turns on the HOT water, you flip the wall switch DOWN to turn the lights on, people drive on the LEFT, the ground connector is at the TOP of the socket, and some of the maps in the shops have south UP. Don't ask me why...

Fri, 3 Dec 1999

I should never have mentioned boomerang flights as that is what happened yesterday to the first plane that was off deck in CHCH when I posted the last entry!

Well the flight schedule was updated several times, a US Air Force C-130 has arrived to replace the Kiwi one in East Timor, and we received all our extreme weather gear late yesterday, so we are ready to go. We were supposed to fly early this morning, but we received a phone call at 5:30 am saying that the flight was cancelled due to weather at MCM. As soon as the weather breaks it looks like two flights will get off, so with luck we can go tomorrow. I've figured out how to plug my computer into the net here and will test the connection by trying to post these diary entries on my computer in Seattle. I've got my fingers crossed that we will be flying tomorrow.

Sat 4 Dec 1999

My finger crossing worked I guess because now I am at MacMurdo Station typing this quick message before I go to bed. It is stunningly beautiful out with no clouds and the sun about 20 degrees above the horizon at 10 pm. No more night sky for me until I go home. Two flights made it today and I was lucky to be on the first one as the second one contained the fresh food so there was no heat except on the flight deck (where the pilots are) for the entire flight. Our flight was packed with 50 people and 2 pallets of gear. All of our excess baggage has made it, and most of our shipped baggage is already at Pole. Tomorrow I will find out where all our shipped gear is, try to locate some antenna masts that a friend is lending me, and climb Observation Peak for a bit of well deserved exercise. I took 2 rolls of photos on the flight in - The glaciers spilling out of the Taylor Valley, and especially the volcanic Mt. Erebus were crystal clear and the plane window had even been cleaned recently too! I am manifested to fly to Pole on Monday with luck. It's great to be back in the Antarctic!

Sun 5 Dec 1999

Our flight is still on for Monday, but a blizzard is due tonight so we will see what happens. I spent the morning getting together things to bring to the South Pole from the Field Center here. I couldn't locate the antenna masts, but I have a friend who will do it for me. We need large backpacks, a distance wheel, sleeping bags and route flags. Once all that suff was together I had the day off and climbed Observation Peak with my coworker Steve. We could seethe Ross ice shelf, the Kiwi Antarctic station Scott Base, and the sea ice runway. At this point in the season planes land on a sea ice runway, although the ice is getting soft so next week flight operations will move to the ice shelf 5 miles away. After lunch I visited the historic Scott Hut, climbed the west ridge which flanks MacMurdo, and took more photos. I stayed up till midnight visiting with my Scottish friend Mike Willis who will be surveying the mountains nearby. He has some wonderful photos and maps of the area, and may come to visit in Bloomingdale for the Goodwill Games this year!

Tue 7 Dec 1999

The storm has stalled so we snuck out before it arrived and flew to South Pole Station early this morning. It is wonderful to be back, I was last here in 1992. We met the crew at lunch then had meetings to arrange work orders for the carpenters, electricians, and communications people who will support us. I am staying in the 'choice' accommodations, a Jamesway hut that is an insulated version of the ones in the TV show M.A.S.H. Steve spent the winter of 1992-1993 at South Pole, and his friends put us in the best Jamesway, with the station manager and other fine people. What a treat! All our boxes have arrived - 4600 pounds in 24 containers. I organized and packed all of it, and arranged the shipment, so it was my responsibility, and now I don't have to worry anymore. The altitude here is 9300 feet, but due to the cold air, the pressure equivalent is 11,000 feet. It makes me a bit dizzy and I get a headache, so I'm off to bed early to rest up for tomorrow.

Thurs 9 Dec 1999

For the last two days I have been very busy getting the preparation work done on our research buildings. We now have heat, power, network connections, and tables and benches thanks to the electrician Mark, carpenters Jennifer and Gary, computer expert Jason, and Joe and Paul who oversee the construction for us. Now that I'm on the network, it is much easier for me to add entries to our web pages. Before I had to send files to a computer in Boulder Colorado, then from there to my computer in Seattle, WA. Now I can simply edit the web pages, press the 'publish' button, and the updates magically get sent to Seattle. We have a satellite link until 2:00 pm to work on the internet, so I'll do all my computing and email in the morning. We are still unpacking equipment, but in the next day or so we can start testing out our experiments. I've got my new skiis out and I am making tracks to the places I like to go. The windchill is often -50 degrees, so my goggles frost up, but the skiing keeps me warm. Off to lunch now, we have WONDERFUL yummy food here - and amazing desserts too!

Fri 10 Dec 1999

Last night I took a shower and washed my clothes after some skiing so I feel really good and clean. Today the carpenters put some more benches and shelves in out huts and I installed my balloon winch. Our first experiment is to shine an infrared lamp into the clean air sector parallel to the snow surface, where it will be reflected back to us by a retroreflector shown in the SPT image here . We will measure the transmitted light along the path with an interferometer to see how water vapor, snow crystals and gasses in the air affect the transmission. Along the path I will have two video ice particle samplers called HYVIS, plus instruments to very accurately measure the water vapor and temperature called TP3-ST, in heated boxes of my own design. You can see these instruments if you scroll down here. We are now working on getting our 0.5 km path marked out and assisting the electricians in running a power line out to the site for the boxes. A busy time indeed!

Sat 11 Dec 1999

Yesterday we worked really hard to set up a 1/2 km path of flags where our retroreflectors will go. The electricians are running power along the path to two sites where my HYVIS and TP3-ST instruments will go. We put up a large canvas tent near the retroreflectors to rest in, store tools, and to camp out in for fun. After work I took a long ski (for me), about 5 km, and it was such a thrill to get so far away. Past the station and antenna field there are no landmarks at all, I just ski along and enjoy the ridges on the snow called sastrugi. I learned to map my route using a portable GPS which determines positions from satellites. I hope to build up to a 20 km ski trip. At that distance you don't even see the station and can enjoy a 360 degree panorama of the Antarctic Plateau. This morning I learned about an instrument called a LIDAR that my friends Jim and Sergei have set up. It shines a laser beam into the sky and measures the time it takes to reflect from the cloud layers. From the time it takes for the reflected light to return one can determine the height of the clouds. It is really neat! Sergei is from Moscow University in Russia and he is now working for NASA. We eat meals together regularly and I've learned many interesting things about Russia. I'd like to travel there some day.

Sun 12 Dec 1999

The crew here gets Sunday off so it is quiet today. Last night I borrowed Sergei's camera, and took a few pictures of Waddles around the station for the web page. This morning I posted them, and folks here seem to really like Waddles alot, so I'll take some more photos when I get a chance. I worked a bit in the morning and then took the afternoon off to go skiing. I went with my friend Jim from NASA and we totaled 12km which was quite some exercise for me. It was -30 F out but there was no wind and it was sunny so it was not too cold. First we went 4km to the wreked C-130 that I has last visited 8 years ago. The entire plane is buried, just the top three feet of the rudder is sticking out above the snow. There is a tunnel down to the escape hatch in the top of the cockpit, so we crawled around inside. It is very eerie and cold. The temperature is -55C inside which is the average temperature at South Pole, and the snow temperature a couple of meters deep. After climbing out we skiied another 4km to a warming hut that was dragged out by a tractor for ski trips. It is a passive solar trombe wall design and was +70 F inside, proving the energy of the sun can be used for heating even down here! After warming up and eating cookies we headed back to the Station. I plan on returning to the ski hut to spend the night - there is a bed in there and a Coleman stove too! In the evening Steve gave a wonderful lecture on the Climate of the Antarctic as well as explaining our projects here. It was excellent and well received. He is a superb teacher and can make complicated subjects clear to anyone who is interested. It is such a pleasure and privilege to work with him on these trips!

Mon 13 Dec 1999

It's been a very busy day today. Mark the electrician has strung a half km of power cable along the path that we are going to use in the clean air sector to measure the transmission of infrared light through the atmosphere. The power is needed for the two heated boxes I made (seen here without the VCR) that will house the frostpoint hygrometers to measure humidity and temperature, and the HYVIS which will videotape the falling ice crystals. With these we will know the state of the atmosphere along our path, then compare that to the infrared signature we see with the FTIR. I got both the heated boxes working, installed 1.5 meter masts on them for the humidity sensors and tested out the HYVIS and VCRs. All we need now is some snow to start collecting data. After dinner I wired the winch up for the balloon experiment to make sure it survived the journey. A long but productive day - we are almost ready to do some science here.

Tue 14 Dec 1999

I spent most of the day getting the balloon winch installed and working. The winch is bolted to the floor and lines up with the fairlead through the ceiling. The winch controller tested out fine and works on a leg of  208V 3 phase power although the top voltage is less than I tested at home where we have 240V. That's ok though as the DC winch motor only need 180V which I just get with rectified 208V. Steve and I also put our sleds together today and we have power along the transmission path thanks to Mark. Before dinner we went to the dedication of the new microwave astronomical telescope called DASI. I made friends with John Carlstrom (when we were both in McMurdo) who has put this telescope program together. John took Steve and I on a tour of the telescope turret. It is truly amazing, and will have 13 detectors at cm. wavelengths that will act in concert as an interferometer. This telescope will be used to image the cosmic background radiation in deep space perpendicular to our galatic center. Apparently it has the potential to prove whether  the origin of the universe is a 'big bang' or that the inflationary model is the case. I need to learn more about the details of the inflationary model - I only recall that it requires Einstein's 'cosmological constant' which is a fudge factor that was not thought to be compelling (especially by Einstein), but that is now being considered as possible again. It's fun to learn all this new stuff from the astronomers here!

Wed 15 Dec 1999

The first day to actually collect data - now that is exciting!  I set up the heated boxes and ran the frost point hygormeters side by side to see how they compare. I let them run for 2 hours and got over 2000 readings each. The frost point temperatures agreed to 0.05C so they indeed compare well. The air temperatures agreed to a half a degree, and there were fluctuations of a couple of degrees, perhaps due to solar heating. The next thing to try is to put one of the instruments in the shade to see the effects of sunlight. We also open and tested the FTIR, it's desiccant was pink so we change it out. Hopefully the beamsplitter is ok, even with the moisture it got enroute, but it will surely dry out quickly with the dry air here. While Christie was over with her forklift to drop off the FTIR computer rack, she also gave our transmission shack a nudge so it is lined up with our path nicely now. Tonight I hope to introduce Waddles around and take her photo with her new friends here.

Thurs 16 Dec 1999

Jim and Sergei from NASA-Goddard have got their lidar working so we spent most of the day learning how to run it. A lidar sends pulses from a laser up to the clouds and measures the time it takes for the reflected light to return to the instrument. From that one can get a vertical profile of  the cloud structure. Jim has modified his lidar to try something new, to send the pulse downward to a mirror that sends the beam along our transmission path. It is tricky setting up the mirror however, it has to be within 1/100 of a degree to be parallel to the surface. We got it close but will have to work on the alignment tomorrow. I met some tourists who flew in a couple of days ago with Adventure Network. They intended to stay at Pole for a couple hours then fly back (for $65,000), but a storm hit their base in the Patriot Hills near the coast so they have to camp out. It's been four days now, and the 5 guides seem ok, but some of the clients look pretty miserable (rich elderly folks). They come in to warm up once in awhile. Steve though better before he might of mentioned that Antarctic storms rarely last more than 2 weeks. They have no skiis, and marginal boots, so unfortunately they can't enjoy the polar plateau all that much. I guess they must be playing alot of cards in their tents.

Fri 17 Dec 1999

Last night Steve and I decided to have some fun! We packed up some food and water, warm clothes, and a radio and went to the ski hut, about 4km away to spend the night. There was a strong tail wind, but when we got to the passive solar hut it was 70F inside! I have been using a GPS to make a map of the various trips I've been taking. Steve got a contour map of the snow surface within 30km of South pole made by Ellen Mosley-Thompson and I've been putting my trips on that. I remember a 20km round trip ski I took in 1992 where I got far enough to loose sight of the station. The hills here are only 2-3 meters over a km, but we thought we might try and find a place a bit closer where we would no longer see the station. This morning the wind was gusting to 20 knots and it was cloudy and cold in the hut. The windchill was around -70C so we bundled up leaving no skin exposed and went looking for our topographic low. We found it after about 4km, but could still see the higher parts of station. On the way back however I saw a weird dark spot on the snow and went to see what it was. It turned out to be the first campsite of a French woman who left South Pole a month ago to ski to the coast. She had bailed out about 4 pounds of food, a large Hellie-Hanson down jacket, and a pair of goretex and mylar booties. The jacket fits Steve, and I'll give the booties to Ellen - they look great for skiing! We made it to or research hut by 11:30am and spent the rest of the day working on the lidar. A fun diversion and change of pace this morning!

Sat 18 Dec 1999

Today I got up early to meet with Joe Crane at our research huts which have been dubbed the "Sunshine Trailer Park" We have three huts that have been used for various projects in the past. Two are now attached with a door between them. In one of these we have set up office space and computer terminals, and in the other I have mounted my winch for the balloon, and have begun to set up the balloon telemetry as well. The third hut, dubbed the 'transmission shack', is the home of the FTIR, which Von has named the PAERI when it is used in transmission mode. Joe, Kurt (who I know from 1990 here), Mark and I designed a balloon hanger to store our balloon in. The balloon is large and shaped like a blimp. It is about 8 ft in diameter and almost 20 ft long. We came up with a 10 ft deep trench in the snow 12'x24' that will have  12/12 pitch roof trusses for extra headroom and a snow ramp on the downwind side to access the balloon. Hopefully it will be ready week after next. The rest of the day I spent installing the telemetry antennas and preamplifiers. In the evening I went to comms to use the xerox machine and found all the comms folks watching a movie. They had connected a DVD drive to a computer presentation projector, which projected on a screen about 7 ft wide. I wound up watching two films with them, The Matrix and The Fifth Element, both sci-fi with lots of wild effects. It's my first chance to view DVD projected like that and the image quality is astounding. We were about to watch a third film, but the satellite connection to LES9 failed so the comms folks sprang into action to fix it (at one in the morning) and I was tired anyway - so I wandered off to my Jamesway to go to bed.

Sun 19 Dec 1999

Didn't get up until 9:30 am and spent much of the day getting the telemetry working for the balloon. I installed the 403 Mhz receiver and tested out a radiosonde and frostpoint hygrometer using the Tmax interface. It is all working now and the air pressure that the radiosonde reported agreed to 0.5 mb with the met office's air pressure. A good sign that our systems are not only working, but agreeing with the standard instruments. Now we can use the balloon met package to start testing for spatial variation in humidity, hopefully there will be very little. The PAERI shelter has arrived and Von and Penny are in Christchurch, so this coming week should hopefully see alot of science happening. Speaking of science, there was a fantastic lecture by Niels Halverson on the cosmic microwave background radiation that the new DASI telescope will be measuring. In theory they will be able to prove which cosmology is correct (big bang or inflation), and if it is inflation then it will show that the the curvature of the universe is 'flat'. They will also be able to estimate the mass of the universe without relying on gravitational evidence. I asked alot of questions- it seems to be a remarkable time for astronomy with new experiments like this!

Mon 20  Dec 1999

Gremlin day today, I spent the entire day fixing our computers. The network was changed around abit and it took most of the day to get our 4 computers back up and running. I did learn alot about tracing network bugs, so at least it was interesting. I had hoped to test out the frostpoint hygometers today along our transmission path but the silly computers took most of the day. I did get a nice ski in after dinner, I went to the grid north end of the runway from the 'Sunshine trailer park', and took GPS measurements along the runway for most of it's length, up to the red flag where the planes cut over to the dome. Soon I'll map the other end of the runway and out to the wrecked plane. I'm trying to make a comprehensive ski map of the station and environs on my computer, using a plotting package called Origin5. It seems easiest to represent position by azimuth and distance to the pole, so I can make my map in polar coordinates.

Tue 21  Dec 1999

I had a very exciting breakfast this morning with two guys who set the world record skiing here from Berkner Island on the Ronne Ice shelf. Australians Tim Jarvis and Peter Treseder skiied by last week and didn't even stop to say hi, they were attempting the fastest unsupported crossing of Antarctica. However, a week past Pole they found that some of their fuel had spilled on their food so it was inedible, and they skiied back to Pole. They made it here (the first time) in 42 days. Peter has a frostbit thumb that turned black, but it is now turning grey, and with luck he will not loose it. They were quite interested that I have been having trouble with my Garmin GPS, which seems to give good positions and distances, but fails to give good bearings. They had the same problem with their Garmin, and wasted a day with a bad bearing. I'm also quite interested in their account of the snow surface, especially the 2m sastrugi at 85-87deg South, as I am planning a trip to DomeC in 2002-2003 to map snow surface reflectivity for satellite calibration. It's great to have some real explorers in out company, and hear their fantastic stories of skiing to the South Pole. We also had good luck measuring the humidity at our two transmission sites (175m and 375m along our 500m path). the frostpoint temperatures agreed within 0.2deg C even though the instruments were 250m apart. This suggests that our transmission path is uniform in atmospheric conditions which is very important. Unfortunately  the frostpoint hygrometer in the telemetry box was noisy and did not agree well with our ground based boxes. We will have to look at it tomorrow- perhaps the static electricity on the snow surface affected the interface board. I hope it behaves better on the balloon!

Wed 22  Dec 1999    Happy Solstice Day today! - 7:44 GMT, 8:44pm local time here.

One more week of 'summer' here then it gets colder again. The lag between the summer solstice and the average warmest day of the year at South Pole is only a week, compared to around 30 days at home. This is due to the highly reflective snow surface and the high emissivity of the snow which radiated IR energy. We are having a little trouble with the radiosonde telemetry today, but I think we will be able to fix it up without much problem. Von and Penny arrived this evening and it was fun to show them around. They are working on the FTIR and Von and I got the computer and interface working late in the evening. Von is really excited to start collecting data so we will be going full tilt tomorrow to get everything going.

Thurs 23 Dec 1999

Von and Steve worked liked crazy today to get the FTIR up and running. Von was very concerned that the beamsplitter was damaged by moisture enroute, as Steve and I changed the desiccant which was pink when it arrived. Fortunately it is alright, and in a day or two we will be all set to measure the IR transmission along our path. My ground based boxes are working well and tomorrow I will get the HYVIS working. The problems with the telemetry are a bit mysterious so I spent the afternoon with Don and Brad assisting with the weekly launch of their ozonesonde. They are using the exact same telemetry system that we have, and I learned alot from them. I think the major problem I have is the static electricity when testing on the ground. This morning Steve got the telemetry box going and it was much less noisy when left alone rather than being pulled on a sled. There also may be a problem with our third frostpoint hygrometer, so when the transmission experiment is done, I'll compare the suspect unit with one of the ground based ones and trade it out if necessary. I was amazed that I could track the Ozonesone through it's complete flight with my ground system. It went up to about 30km altitude, where the pressure is a mere 10mb, then the balloon burst, and it came screaming down. the last data I received was at the 500mb pressure level. So it looks like my simple receiver/modem system has at least 30km range and should be fine for the tethered balloon.

Fri 24 Dec 1999

Christmas eve today. Most of the day was spent helping Von set up the FTIR. We got a new surge suppressor and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for the FTIR and I put some new breakers in the panel and set it up. It required 240V, but seemed to work fine on two legs of the three-phase power we have here which is 208V. I wired the output to a socket and plugged in the surge-suppressor, and was quite surprised to see the surge suppressor briefly burst into flames! The shipping label stated that it was a 120V output, but in reality it provided 240V! Once again I've been reminded to never trust what I read, and to test the output directly. No harm done luckily, and I think I know where to find a 240V-120V isolation transformer, so we can still make use of the UPS. I also focused the lenses on the HYVIS which are video ice-crystal imagers that we will have on the transmission path and will also fly on the balloon. In the evening we had a Christmas gift exchange, where everyone puts in a present and we draw numbers to pick one of the hundred or so wrapped presents. The twist is that if you like a present someone else has drawn, you can take it from them, and they have to unwrap another. It was about midway through when my number was called, and I got a bottle of wine and a wonderful calendar of paper airplanes. Nobody 'stole' my present so this winter Neil and Naomi can fly a different paper plane every month!

Sat 25 Dec 1999

Christmas day, and I didn't work at all - what a treat! The Christmas kickoff is the race around the world - three laps around the herc taxiway for a total of about 2.5miles. I always ski, and many of the runners beat me. It's tough skiing as the course gets pretty chewed up by the runners. Of course if one does not like running, walking, skiing, or even cycling (the bikes fare poorly) there is another option. A huge 5 pallet sled is connected to the Caterpillar Challenger (affectionately know as the Drag Queen), and about a dozen sofas are mounted on the sleds. More than half the station gets on this, or skidoos, or sprytes, and does their three laps in comfort. There were two unique elements in the motor vehicle side of the race - John played the bagpipes for a lap and a half until they froze, and Mike was towed by a skiddoo while he slalomed along on a snowboard. I came in third among the dozen skiiers, although at least half the runners were ahead of me. History was made by Nils who won the race skating on skiis - he smoked the runners by over a min! What an amazing athlete, he has been working on his skating for over a month now on the runway. The point of the race is not necessarily to win, but to get the Race around the World T-Shirt, a special edition that is not for sale. After collecting our T-Shirts and having some lunch, Steve and I took off for our Christmas ski. We have been skiing alot, and have set the goal to ski out of sight of the station. After looking at the snow topography map (hills here are 3 meters at most over a couple of km), we decided our best chance was to go out about 10km along the 110 longitude line. Usually the wind is out of 270 lon , but we had a rare wind from 120 lon which gave us a tail wind home. That was nice as the air temp was -30F and windchill was hovering around -50F. After a little less than 3 hours of skiing, we made it to our destination and indeed found ourselves out of sight of the station. It was a wonderful panorama of the Antarctic plateau, with the only sign of civilization being our ski tracks which dissolved into the distance. We cut over to about 130 lon and the trip back was equally fun. The station reappeared about 2.5 hours out, and it ever so slowly got bigger and bigger. It was good to be home, with an added treat - the Christmas feast. We washed up and were treated to tablecloths, wine, candles, and a feast. I ate with gusto and felt that after about 6 hours of skiing I deserved every bite. After the dinner I went to comms to their usual Saturday night video party and watched the film 'Emma'. About midnight I wandered back to my Jamesway and slept soundly till 10 the next morning.

Sun 26 Dec 1999

Slow day today. I woke up late and spent most of the late morning and early afternoon catching up on my diary, putting together the x-mas Waddles page from images I took last night, and helping Von and Penny ground the elements of their FTIR. The Sunday afternoon science lecture was about solar neutrinos and I learned some more astronomy and particle physics. After that I cleaned up the research hut and started thinking about the balloon hanger which we designed last week. Kurt will come over early tomorrow with a loader to start excavating the underground portion of the hanger.

Mon 27 Dec 1999

A bit of a crisis with the FTIR, the digital signal processing (DSP) board has failed and we don't have a spare. Von spent the morning diagnosing it with Penny. I had good luck with our archive computer and taught myself how to network it as a server and to set it up using Laplink so we can control it from any of our other computers and send files to it's printer. I also got the SCSI board on the archive computer working so now we can make CDs of our data. In the afternoon we all got together to look at the DSP board. It turned out that the diagnostic codes coming from the board did not make sense, but that we always got the same error message from the computer that the DSP was out of memory. I took the board out and cleaned the memory module contacts, but that did not help. I then switched the memory modules around and reseated the relevant chips but that didn't help either. Finally, I noticed that the board, which is actually 2 boards with some interconnect pins, had the microprocessor on one board and the memory on the other.  It seemed possible that something might be up with the interconnect pins, so I took it all apart, cleaned it up, and put it back together. This did the trick, and the FTIR was back in action. Von was quite happy as it would take at least a week to get a spare flown in. It's nice to have fixed something in the Tape shack - my last attempt with the UPS ended up with a blown surge suppressor.

Tue 28   Dec 1999

Construction of the balloon hangar has begun! Kurt put a 3 yard bucket on his Cat and dug us a hole 12 feet by 24 feet that is 10 feet deep. We had quite pile of snow in the front yard, and Curt amazed us by driving the Cat over an open area which compressed the snow about 10",  then he backbladed the pile over the depressed area so you would never know there was excess snow! He also made us a 24ft ramp leading up out of the pit on the downwind side. Tomorrow Gary and Jennifer will build a deck over the hole so that the balloon hangar will be complete. I spent the day working on the telemetry for the package that will fly on the balloon. Our modem seems very sensitive to the carrier frequency of the package which is 2275 Hz. I wrote a little BASIC program that plays this tone on my computer, so it is easy to adjust the TMAX interface board to this frequency by listening to beats, much like tuning a guitar. We can do this before each flight, and next year I'll get an RF modem which can tolerate variable carrier and noise. I also did some tests and found out that one of our frost point hygrometers is giving incorrect temperatures, so the telemetry is not to blame for the poor readings we got in the original trials. This is not a problem as we have three FPHs, and only need two. I'll send the faulty one back to Switzerland for a tune up when we return. In the evening I ran into Mike Willis who I met in Christchurch. He is here for a couple of days to measure the GPS position of several sites up to 20 km away. He offered to take me along tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to a day of surveying and driving around in Sprytes. In the evening I watched a dual balloon launch. The Met office is switching from AIR to Vaisala radiosondes, and are launching both to see how they compare. The new Vaisala sonde is really neat, it has onboard GPS so it calculates it's position and computes wind speed and direction as a function of altitude. I'm amazed at a disposable GPS unit. When I first stared using GPS in 1988, they cost $45000, and now they are at disposable cost.

Wed 29  Dec 1999

A fun day today! Mike, Larry Hothum from USGS, Zach, and I loaded up two high resolution GPS units, surveying gear, and a bunch of food and headed out in a Spryte to locate Mikes glacial strain markers. The first one was about 5km out on longitude 147E. Mike had two pipes that went down 40m into glacial ice. There is a frozen in anchor at a little beyond the bottom of the pipe. Attached to the anchor is a steel cable that runs up through the pipe to the surface. We first occupied each pipe with a GPS for about an hour, which can provide sub centimeter position accuracy after post processing. We then surveyed the relative heights of the pipes and snow surface, and finally measured the length of the cables above the pipes. From this one can determine the local movement of the icecap, the local strain near the surface of the icecap, and the densification of the surface snow and neve. It was rather cold work, but a clear sunny day and light wind made it pleasant nonetheless. We didn't have coordinates for the second set of pipes, but knew they were about another 5km along the 147E line. After a bit of trial and error, and looking around with the surveying transit we found them and repeated the procedure. I had packed lunch for all of us and it was well appreciated. As we were done with our work and it was not too late I suggested that we see the sights. I first took my friends to Pomerance Land, which is the site of an abandoned solar telescope 10 km from the station on the 148E line. We were pretty close, and found the buildings completely buried, but the telescope tower sticking up about 5m from the snow. I had last been here for a solo ski in 1990, back when the telescope was operational and a generator was kept running, so you could warm up in the electronics room. No such warm building today, it was buried in the ice. I then took my friends to the wrecked C-130. Mike wanted to navigate by GPS, but I insisted on driving by landmarks and the sun to see how well I could find it on my own. It was about 10km away. I headed a couple of km north of the skishack which we could see, then kept that line using the sun. About a km away from the plane I made a small course correction once I saw the bit of rudder sticking out the snow. We went down a 20 ft snow tunnel to the hatch above the cockpit and went inside. I enjoy showing friends this local attraction, it is so eerie and cold in the buried plane. We also went down a new tunnel that extends down to the rudder from the outside of the plane. This tunnel is about 50 feet deep and is steep enough to slide down. The ceiling of the tunnel was covered with beautiful frost flowers and it was fun to chimney back up. When we arrive back to the Station, everyone was headed to the Pole. Very strange! We asked what was going on and it turned out that WGBH, the Boston PBS TV station was filming a special on the millennium. We all waved and said happy 'happy new years', and it will be shown for 10 seconds on their New Years broadcast. After putting our equipment away I caught up on email, had dinner and went to bed to read more of Mawson's 'Home of the Blizzard'. A fun change of pace today indeed!

Thurs 30 Dec 1999

I must admit that I am a bit tired today. The balloon hanger had been built in my absence yesterday and it is not quite large enough vertically. Kurt dug a perfect trench, 12 feet wide as requested, but the trusses were not quite wide enough to span it safely. Some 16 ft 2x10 were available so a deck was built over the trench. However the trusses gave us another 4 feet of headroom which were lost with the deck. I found Kurt, and he agreed that the best solution is to di gthe pit deeper with the Cat 955 and bucket. However the 955 needs about 10.5 feet clearance so he would have to dig it carefully in order to fit under the deck. the deck design is probably better in the long run as it will cause less drifting, especially next winter. I spent the afternoon testing all of the combinations of  frostpointers and control boxes, along with the telemetry system to choose the best setups. It now looks like we will be making transmission measurements with the FTIR  early next week. That means I can start testing the balloon in the next couple of days which is a project that I have been really looking forward to. Went to bed early once again to read Mawson and to rest up for the big y2k party tomorrow!

Fri 31 Dec 1999

The last day of the millennium! Kurt got up early and made the balloon hangar deeper. He is very skilled, and the ramp, hangar bottom, and sides are all perfect. Now we have 2 ft clearance all around. Sebastian and Glen came over and are building a canvas door on the downwind side to keep the air fairly still inside the hanger. It is pretty neat to see such a large space, and to imagine the size of our balloon! I helped Von align the telescope for the transmission experiment, and finished the frostpoint tests. I also set up the video ice particle samplers (HYVIS), as we were getting some nice diamond-dust precipitation, but it stopped after lunch so I'll have to wait till it snows next. After work we all were anticipating the 'party of the millennium'. The new garage was emptied and the electricians set up the music system for our local band and CDs as well, and inflated 1500 balloons which were held up by tarps high overhead. There was quite a cross-section of clothing at the party, from tuxes and tophats to tshirts and costumes. The weirdest part was that it was covered by no less than three networks - ABC, PBS and and a European feed via Germany. I was worried that the coverage would put a damper on the party, but they edited out most everything and nobody seemed to care or notice the guys with cameras. I danced for three hours and kept gasping for breath from the altitude after the fast rock and roll that was featured. Kurt sang up a storm and the band was tremendous, with Gary doing a Neil Diamond song, Eva playing an ABBA diva, and Jen filling in with the harmonies. The frenzy was peaking when Tim invited in 4 Singaporeans who has just arrived after skiing to Pole in 52 days. They seemed to be experiencing a sensory overload, but had smiles all the way.  The balloons dropped at midnight and we all had champagne and exchanged hugs and kisses. The South Pole is on New Zealand daylight savings time (GMT+13) so we were the first to experience the new millennium. Of course all the time zones meet at the South Pole so we had a reason to continue celebrating for the next 24 hours. Steve and I left the party to go out to the Pole. A small plane load of 6 tourists were out there looking cold and enjoying their $65,000 a piece New Years party at the Pole. We had been expecting over 50 tourists, but with Antarctic weather and logistical problems, these 6 were the only ones who made it other than the intrepid Singaporeans who had just skiied in. Steve and I then climbed the tallest tower where we enjoyed the New Years in the GMT+12 time zone, and I took a series of photos to make panorama of our home at the Pole. We then wandered back to the party which was going on even wilder than before, now that the TV guys had left. There were several chilly streakers, the band was playing music they had never tried before, and the dance floor was in pandemonium. With sagging eyelids I wandered back to my Jamesway to get some sleep as there would be plenty of more time zones to celebrate after a good 6 or so hours of shuteye.

Sat 1 Jan 2000

The party was still going on when I awoke at one in the afternoon, but the tourist plane had gone, and there were quite of few tired but happy folks in the Galley eating brunch. I was very surprised when I read an email from my mother-in-law Sandie that said:
"I just caught the end of a PBS program on Antarctica. And you were front and center, dancing up a storm to celebrate the millennium. You're looking good and the party looks like a real blast.
Enjoy!! Happy New Year!!!  Love, Sandie"
As I noted yesterday, it is indeed strange to be at a televised party! Now that the balloon hanger was complete I really wanted to try a test flight. It was perfect timing as I had promised to do my best to try and fly the Bloomingdale School Banner on New Years Day. Steve and I screwed 18" lag bolts into the snow floor of the 'hanger' and poured in some water so they would freeze in. This made for very effective anchors, as hard as I could try, I could not pull them out. I then made some webbing loops and attached them to the lags behind large washers with clove hitches. Each webbing loop had a carabiner attached so we could easily moor the balloon, with a central point and the four corners of the hanger attached to lines to keep the balloon from touching the walls. After dinner there was a light wind that was picking up. Steve, Von and I unpacked and inflated the balloon, then Penny, Mike, and Larry arrived and helped attached the Bloomingdale Banner. The balloon is of an aerodynamic design and points into the wind, but the banner was like a big sail that made the balloon oscillate in the wind. We attached an ice axe to each of the bottom the corners of the banner, to augment the old electrical boxes we had already used as ballast, and the balloon-banner flew much better. As some added fun I put Waddles in a styrofoam  'basket' and she flew right under the banner in style. We took lots of photos, and people started coming over to visit as the bright orange balloon caught their eye. After the maiden flight, we traded the banner for a radiosonde package and watched the pressure and temperature from my computer screen as we sent the balloon up. We went up thru a cloud, and could then see the bright reflection from the balloon in the sun above the cloud deck. We let out about 1.3 km of tether, and the balloon went from the 690mb to 580mb level which is about 1.2 km above the surface. We then winched the balloon in at 70% maximum winch speed which brought it back in about 10 min. The balloon had lost some helium from the nose port, perhaps because we winched it in so quickly. Next time we will bring it in more slowly, but it is good to know that we can reel it in quickly in case an unauthorized aircraft arrives without radioing in first. I stayed up till midnight downloading the banner and Waddles pictures and making a web page, then headed off to bed after a wonderful New Years Day.

Sun 2 Jan 2000

Compete whiteout conditions today with a fog of supercooled water drops, so no transmission or balloon experiments for a while. That is fine for all of us as we are exhausted after the extremely active weekend we had. I have optimized the ground based weather stations I built with the best 2 of our frostpoint hygrometers and thermocouples, and Steve practiced using them in the autolog mode. Set up this way he can program the dataloggers to sample at any interval he chooses to make the best use of the logger's memory. I reduced the data the Steve acquired and it looked excellent, with agreement between the boxes to 0.1C in temperature and frostpoint, and the relative humidity at or near saturation as expected in this whiteout. I also reduced the data we collected from the balloon yesterday and it looked very good, displaying a cloud top inversion which agreed with the met office's radiosonde launch that Steve had got a copy of. After lunch was the Sunday science lecture, and we heard about the ozone hole, and the recently discovered decrease in global atmospheric chlorine, which is good news for the ozone. The bad news is that the ozone will not recover to it's natural state for another 50 years, and that for complete recovery even the HCFCs (replacements for the CFCs) will have to be replaced themselves with a new refrigerant. After a bit more work before dinner, I had a quick meal then went straight to bed to catch up on some well needed rest

Mon 3 Jan 2000

Steve and I spent the morning planning how we were going to organize the experiments after I leave at the end of the week. The ground based met systems are working well and I am now finishing up the telemetry projects in conjunction with our balloon. I've set up a method for Steve to tune the carrier frequency of the Tmax interface so we always get a connection with the modem. Sometimes we get spurious data from the hygrometer, so that us something for me to work out. I then built a second sonde package to attach to the HYVIS and we tested it on the balloon in the afternoon before between herc landings. It was as spectacular success, we went up to 1.7 km above the surface (506mb level), and on my computer  I could simultaneously look at the lidar trace of backscattered laser light vs altitude and the temperature vs pressure profile that we observed from the balloon. The next step will be to loft the HYVIS and record the ice crystal habit and size distribution followed by the TP3 frostpoint hygrometer. Von and Steve are quite happy as characterizing the atmosphere will make the upward looking FTIR measurements really worthwhile. I'm still catching up on sleep after the wild weekend, so I had a quiet laundry night this evening.

Tue 4 Jan 2000

Another beautiful sunny day on the plateau here at the South Pole. Steve and I worked hard today as I am showing him how to run the groundbased and balloon borne experiments and reduction software I have been working on, so that he can keep it going with Von and Penny after I leave at the end of the week. We had an extremely successful flight of our tethered balloon late in the day, lofting the frostpoint hygrometer package to 1.7 km with the telemetry working for the entire flight. For fun after we had finished I put a video camera in a box and flew that, but it froze up pretty quickly. I was inspired though, and after dinner Steve and I tried two more flights with the camera supplemented with 4 handwarmers and the images were amazing! The first flight was to 3/4 of a km but the dome was not in the field of view. So for the second flight I went up to 1.5km and captured most of the station. The movies start with me on my back on the roof waving goodbye then goes up to quite a birds-eye-view, then returns to see people walking around, and ultimately back to me on the roof. I need some time now to do a frame grab so I post an image on the web page.

Wed 5 Jan 2000

Steve and I continued to work on getting down the data acquisition routine for the ground based boxes and the telemetry. The data from the balloon flight yesterday was junk, the frost point hygrometer temperatures were all over the place, although the radiosonde reported correct temperatures and pressures. We finally found the cause of the problem by plotting the entire record, rather than chopping off the data when the package was not actually aloft. It turned out the the frost pointer did fine until the very point in time that the pressure started changing - i.e. the package had lifted off the roof. The only explanation can be static electricity, so I'm going to ground the winch and use tinfoil to make a faraday cage around the electronics. It will be interesting to see if this helps. In the afternoon Steve and I took a three hour ski and one of the destinations was Mike's survey pipes. Before he left, Mike made some extensions for his strain pipes, and I offered to install them as it seemed a great excuse for a ski trip. Well it was, and Steve and I enjoyed another beautiful, sunny, windless day skiing about 10 km on the Antarctic plateau. It's always nice to actually earn my dinner, and the vegetarian jambalaya really hit the spot.

Thurs 6 Jan 2000

I shielded the entire radiosonde package with aluminum foil and we flew it to an altitude of 1.7 km, but the noise in the frost point hygrometer persisted. The sonde's pressure and temperature seems fine, as does the air temperature recorded by the frost pointer, it is only the frost point temperature itself that is noisy. The clue is that before launch and afterwards, with the package sitting on the roof, there is no noise in the signal. It therefore must be either static electricity or the movement of the package, perhaps light getting into the frostpoint's optical detectors. My next idea is to fly is with the sensor pointing downward rather than out the side. In the afternoon I cut a deal with the German film crew. They had planned on flying a camera on a balloon system for the documentary they are making, but the balloon system weighed too much so it had to be left in McMurdo. I traded them the German rights to my aerial footage (I retained the rights to use it in the US), and they gave me their balloon. I'll get it in McMurdo when I am there next Monday and send it here to Steve as we still have authorized weight transport to Pole. Unknown to us, the Germans decided to feature us in their film to provide some continuity to my footage. They filmed us launching the balloon and me lying down on the roof waving goodbye to the balloon like I did in my footage. It will be fun to see their film when it comes out, they will be mailing us a copy in March or so.

Fri 7 Jan 2000

A number of planes in and out today so we didn't have time to fly the balloon. I started the day out by using the video camera to film a walkthu under the dome. I visited most of the buildings and some of the footage is interesting, but I don't really enjoy video. Unlike still photography, people don't really like being videotaped, and it is very difficult to get good results. For example, when the film crew shot us launching the balloon yesterday, we had to do it four times over so they could get all the camera angles they wanted. It's fun to experiment, but I much prefer my Kodachrome stills, and will only use the video for dynamic scenes. We ran the HYVIS yesterday and today, and Steve and I looked at the footage of the ice crystals. It is amazing to see the ice-crystals as they are sampled, although the HYVIS is designed for clouds and not diamond-dust precipitation, so we didn't get too many crystal samples. After we return I'll figure out how to adapt the electronics so that we will sample every 10 min rather than 10sec. However the HYVIS is working quite well and will be a good tool for crystal observations when we get it tuned up. At 5pm we had a party at our research huts in appreciations of all the folks here who have helped us out. Over 50 people showed up, and many were on our roof deck. We flew the balloon at 50' and made a general announcement to come for refreshments under the balloon. By 8pm the party was getting really fun, and Laura suggested that I put the camera on the balloon and we all would lie on the snow spelling out 90^oS. I hesitated to fire up the camera but was persuaded by the crowd. It wound up working well, and we spelled out 2000! too. Tomorrow I'll try to find time to frame grab some images from the video so I can email them to all who participated. After a very late dinner Darren took Steve, Von, Penny and I to the 'seismic vault' which is a deep tunnel where seismometers are mounted to sense earthquakes worldwide. The feature attraction in the vault are the frost flowers on the walls - the air down there is so still  that ice crystals several inches in size form from water-vapor generated by temperature gradients. They look like classic depth hoar - hexagaonal cups with ridges on their sides. However I have only seen depth hoar to about 1 cm size, and some of these were 8cm or so! I took a whole roll of photos- I hope they turn out!

Sat 8 Jan 2000

I came into work a little late today as we had so much fun yesterday at our party and in the Seismo pit. At 11:00 a plane came carrying lots of folks. We were being visited by a contingent of DVs (Distinguished visitors) which included Rita Colwell, the head of NSF, and three House members who are on the appropriation's committee which funds NSF. Also an the plane was Tim Ramnes, a UW graduate student, who is going to run the experiments that I have put together. Tim and I worked together in Boulder, CO this summer at NCAR, and he is great fun to be with. I found it rather funny when the plane landed, The DVs got off and were greeted by two of the station leaders and the four of us went running up, right past the DVs, and greeted Tim and took lots of pictures as if he was the celebrity. The DVs looked a little dissapointed as we ignored them completely. Later however, Steve and Von gave a presentation to the DVs about Antarctic climate and they were impressed and asked lots of questions. I gave Tim a quick tour and we got down to work at the Trailer Park so I could teach him about all of the experiments he will be working on. We sucessfully test flew the HYVIS, and it looks like we should get good data from it, and were happy thatthe balloon can loft it as it is our heaviest package. We also flew the frostpoint hygrometer with the instrument pointing down rather than out the side of the package, and all the noise we have been experiencing went away! I can't explain it properly, but I outlined a number of tests for Tim to try to attempt to understand the sourse of the noise. So now all the experiments I have put together are working; the ground based boxes, the HYVIS and Frostpoint balloon borne packages, the telemetry, and the balloon winch. This is a relief as I am leaving the day after tomorrow, and from then on I can only troubleshoot these experiments via email. At 10:30 pm we finished up a 14 hour day of work, and went to relax at the summer camp lounge to enjoy traditional bluegrass music featuring Von and Darren. It was excellent, - they started playing at 9:00pm and the crowd insisted they play till after midnight. A wonderful way to end a wonderful and full day!

Sun 9 Jan 2000

Slept in today then went on a tour of the tunnel that John is digging to connect the new station to a sewer bulb and an underground water source. These are made by pumping hot water into the ice which melts out a chember for water and sewer storage. John's tunnel is impressive, it is 1500ft long so far and is 20 ft below the surface, with a rectangle crossection of 6 ft wide and 10 ft tall. He has a machine that grinds away the tunnel's face, and a snowblower that shoots the chips into a huge tube, where the cuttings are sucked to the surface by another blower. There are 3 vertical shafts to connect power and for workers to climb down, and it is -56 F in the tunnel which is the average annual temperature at the surface. John has mined in rock for 25 years and is full of amazing stories about life in the mines. It makes me appreciate every metal object that I see now, knowing that people like him had to extract the ore from the earth for these things to be made. After lunch Tim and Steve and I worked till 9pm organizing the rest of the experiments for after I leave. At 9 our group had a little going away party for me in the skylab lounge, and several other friends, Tim and Gary came as well. We enjoyed the Christmas bottle of wine I got at the gift exchange, and some other wine Steve got as well. At midnight we went to the Pole to photograph our whole gorup of five: Steve, Von, Penny, Tim and I. After that I went and packed up and got to bed by 2am. Hopefully I can sleep on the plane tomorrow as I have to get up at 7am tomorrow to arrange the transport of my excess baggage.

Mon 10 Jan 2000

Got up at 7 and got my baggage straightened out, they will pick it up at the Trailer Park for me. A quick breakfast, then off to tag my bags, followed by a redeployment meeting. The plane was delayed due to fog in McMurdo, and Steve and I worked out the talk I'll give in Grenoble, France in late February. We are planning to collaborate with a French group to go to Dome-C Antarctica to study the reflectance of the snow surface there in the 2002-2003 summer season. We also talked some about our plans for next year; Steve and the students will be at South Pole, while Mel and Collin and I will be on an Australian Expedition to East Antarctica via icebreaker. It will be the first time we have tried to have two field campaigns in one season, but things seem to be going well here, so next season hopefully the South Pole group will have a good start on the projects. The fog was not clearing from McMurdo, so I got to take a well needed 4 hour nap after lunch, then visit with friends thru dinner. Jason made me a going away present, a CD with about 800 digital pictures from various sources during the season. It was really kind of him to do that, and I enjoyed looking at them after dinner. I got a chance to make some frame grabs of the video images I made from the balloon borne camera and will give a disk to Jason in return. My flight was ultimately cancelled so I did some last minute computing in the evening then off to bed. Perhaps I'll fly tomorrow!

Tue 11 Jan 2000

The plane was in the air before I even woke up, it's coming one hour early and will be on deck here at 10:45am, leaving at 12:00 noon. The weather here is good so I expect I'll be leaving South Pole in a couple of hours. While it's hard to say goodbye to my friends here, I've been looking forward to going home to my family and friends in the Adirondacks. So good bye South Pole - I'm on my way home!