Greeting From Byrd Camp

Setting up the antenna tower, so I can blog about it.

Three Little Dots

The right most dot is a fishing hut. The two on its left are parasails.

The Shuttle of Eden

Part of the decor for Freezing Man. Our down south version of Burning Man.

Night Hike

On a night hike with the shuttles night crew. We're looking at the edge of the sea ice and blue water. First time I've seen open ocean since leaving Christchurch.

Thanksgiving feast

Started eating before I remembered to take a picture. This is the first Thanksgiving where each member of my family spent it away from every other member. But as usual, no turkey.

It's all about the free shirts

Shirt for participating in the Turkey Trot 5k. I took pictures this time. Guess I better run the 10K. Free shirt at stake.

50-0, wow thats bad

Its 3 am and I'm snowboarding

Sea ice behind me.

MSL launched!

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-362

Not antarctica related but still cool. Many of my friends and former coworkers spent the last few years working for this moment. Now we have 8 months to wait for the EDL and see taht sky crane in action.

Box of Internet

I can toss you out of a plane anywhere on this Earth and as long as you have this box with you, you'll have sweet sweet internet.

Tony Leung wants to come to Antarctica

Sail away!

Packing for camp

Eveythig minus the servers and communications stuff.

Movies Review: Deer Hunter

Meryl Streep in 1978 was a show stopper.

Score for Outer Planet

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2011/11/16/europa_great_lake/

Down South Jokes

McMurdo is the only place where a 6 is either warm or hot. Talking about weather and women. (dudes too, I'm no statue of David here)

Antarctica is the asshole of the earth. I guess that makes us the shit!

Movie Review: Documentary on McMurdo

This film is by Werner Herzog, who also did Grizzly Man. He has the best narrating voice, raspy, ironic and funny. He pokes fun at one of PC Techs Bill and has some great footage from Henry Kaiser and the other divers in the film. The people, scenes and depiction of the town are all very accurate of life down here. Recommend this everyone who's curious as to what life is like down here.

Even the Potato Chip bags are White

No need for marketing when you only have two choices. Ruffles or Fritos. Both come in white bags.

Farce of the Penguins

Better than March of the Penguins. Samuel L. Jackson narrates this tale about Mutha*^&$*% Penguins.

Pacman vs. Marquez

We get the fight here on Armed Forces Radio and Television. Cool, on now!

Inside Scott's Hut

A couple of days ago I got to see the inside of the Discovery Hut. Josh was hosting a last minute tour for a New Zealander who had to go back for a medical emergency. So before he was to take off, a tour was hastily arranged so that he can see this piece of history. Most of the hut was the way it was left behind. Although a few other expeditions did use the hut on subsequent explorations. My earlier blog post incorrectly referred to this hut as Scott's second hut. It is in the fact the older of the two Scott Huts and is more commonly reffered to as the Discovery Hut. They didn't actually sleep in the hut since it was too cold and instead slept in their ships. Shackleton had also used the hit on his expedition.

Some socks and seal fur booties.

This box was probably left by Scott's second expedition. They build the second hut, but also used this one for staging on the route south.

This is the Cross commemorating Scott on Ob Hill.

Some Amazing footage shot by the divers

Check out youtube user Bravo147M for the rest of the videos.

Holloween Party

It was a battle between Winnie the Pimp and Oscar the Grouch for best holloween costume. Oscar won. And yes Earth, Wind, Water and Heart were also there.

Holloween down here is all backwards. The ladies were all covered up and man skin papered the walls. Lot of legg, wrong kind of leg. Haha holloween night is one where LA has McMurdo beat hands down.

Airshow

Yesterday the Airforce and Ken Borek had an open house and showed us all their cool aircrafts. Here's 4 LC-130. They're like C-130's except they have retractable skis so they can land on their wheels or on sleds. There's 10 in use and we have 5 of them on the ice. The New York Air National Guard have all 10. These planes will be flying to the pole and the deeps camps.

Two twin otters and two baslers. They all ski equipted as well.

Close up of an LC-130 ski.

They run 4 turbo prob engines. One of these Hercs burns 1500 pounds of fuel before it even leaves the runway. Thats the take off weigh of the little Cessna 152 I was flying all summer.

Instruments in the LC-130

A twin otter.

The twin otter's panel. Derek the twin otter pilot flew the other plane from the North pole, where he was flying for Ken Borek. The trip took 65 hours and days. He flew the plane from Arctic down through the United States then to Guatemala, Costa Rica, Chile then to Rothera, the British station on the other side of Antarctica. Then from there they stopped at the South Pole, picked up the first winter overs and came to McMurdo. How many pilot say they flew from pole to pole? Awesome!

A Basler. One of these guys was in service in WWII as a DC-3. Since then Basler retrofitted it with turboprop engines and skis. They still have their jump doors that open in which airborne units jumped out of in WWII.

Inside the Basler. The deck is sloped which makes it a bitch for the cargo guys to load pallets in and out.

The controls of a Basler.

Three hercs and two twin otters from the window of a Basler.

The Basler has square windows. It has an unpressurized cabin so there's no danger of stress fractures on the corners. This one, FMKB, visible through the square window was actually the one that crashed in Dec 2007 in West Antarctica around PIG camp. The undercarriage and propellers were damaged. its back up and flying again now.

A Bell-212 helo and an herc on each wing.