May 13+14, 2017

Weekend, and the wind returned

The entire EGRIP camp as seen from the water vapour sampling site.

Now, we have been here 18 days, and so far we have only had two days with weak wind. Wind speeds continue to be around 7-10 m/s and temperatures stay below -20°C. It is cold to work outside. This didn’t stop us from having a good Saturday evening with Japanese specialities cooked by Kenji and Motohiro. With our good satellite link, people were even able to watch some of the Eurovision song contest on screen.
Everything is fine in camp, and Sunday the drillers made a good step forward as they reached the bottom of the reaming from last year. Now, they only need a few final checks, before they insert the borehole casing. The drillers have used the reaming process to troubleshoot the new drill electronics, and Jens Christian has been busy making corrections to the program. It is far better to test the new electronics at this stage than running into problems during real drilling. We have been resetting the markers on the 3.6 km long lead-in at the SW axis of the skiway. A lead-in is a row of markers that allow the flight crew to line up the plane for landing on the skiway. Already last year, the New York Air Guard started commenting that our lead in was not straight. Today, we made the lead-in straight again, and it turned out that the far end was curved 12 m off axis. Our SW lead-in ends in the vicinity of the edge of the ice stream. Therefore, the velocity there is a bit slower, i.e. 44 m/yr compared to 50 m/yr of the camp and skiway and this explains the curve.

What we did Saturday and Sunday:

1. Grooming skiway.
2. Work in the drilling trench.
3. Test of radar.
4. Routine stop on main generator for maintenance. All o.k.
5. Repairing electrical appliances.
6. Working on control program for drill electronics.
7. Making tags and labels for ice cores.
8. Levelled the area around main generator.
9. SW lead-in markers reset. From marker 5 the lead-in bended towards S.
10. Marker 12 was 12 m off axis.
11. Freezer aggregate in extraction tunnel mounted.
12. German snow sampling.
13. Japanese aerosol sampling and snow experiments.
14. Water vapour sampling, methane sampling, boundary layer and meteorology station working.

Weather Saturday: Sunshine all day. Temp. -22°C to -34°C. Wind: 15-20 kt from WSW. Visibility: To horizon.
Weather Sunday: Sunshine all day. Temp. -20°C to -33°C. Wind: 12-15 kt from SW. Visibility: To horizon.

FL, J.P. Steffensen