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Sunday, November 6, 2011

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.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Happy Camper Cont'd

Camp, with Castle Rock in the background.

A camp divided. It was the trenchers vs. the tenters. I think the tenters won.

The tenters.

This was an exercise we did simulating white out conditions. We basically put buckets on our heads and were suppose to located a fellow camper that got lost white heading to the outhouse.

Where we going?

Friday, November 4, 2011

Happy Camper

Had a great time doing Happy Camper this week. It was a two day course on cold weather survival. In about two weeks I'll be headed down to one of the deep field camps, Byrd Camp with an IT team to setup Communications and their internet, so we have to this this class as a requirement before we hop on the Helo or Herc.

Loomey, one of our instructors teaching us how to troubleshoot a whisperlite stove.

The contents of our survival bag. This bag goes with us on the aircraft and has fuel, tent, sleeping bags, pads, shovels, saw, food rations, extra extreme cold weather gear and some other random stuff.

Kevin, our other instructor. He's probably about to show us how to use a pee bottle without getting out of your bag. No one wants a frostbitten willy.

A lot of saws and shovels. We put all these to use building an ice wall and snow caves.

How many grantees and contractors does it take to raise a mountain tent?

Loomey constructing the "kitchen".

A sample ice cave. Many people chose to dig themselves an ice cave. It can be sufficiently warm, but takes at least 3 hours to dig. More if the snow is hard.

Setting up shop.

The kitchen running on full capacity melting snow. It takes an extrememly long time to get hot water. We were lucky too that it was sunny windless day. We put the hot water in our water bottles and slept with them in our bags, its a nice little luxury.