May 20+21, 2017

A busy weekend and a good Saturday party

Work in the strong wind Saturday.

Work began normally Saturday morning. It was warm; but the wind was always there to move snow around. Around 14.30 clouds came rolling in and the wind picked up to 30 kt. It began to snow too. All of a sudden we were in a blizzard. Luckily, it lasted for only 2 hours, so when people working in the trenches came up at 16.30, weather was back to normal. Several didn’t even know that we had bad weather for two hours. Still the snow drift continued, and it was necessary to clean the trench entrance with a snowblower twice.
Saturday evening dinner was prepared by Nicolai (main course) and Emilie (dessert). With 29 in camp, it became a good and lively party, and several were late at getting out of bed Sunday morning. According to the plan, we should have had a flight tomorrow; but due to delays in food deliveries, we decided to postpone the flight to Tuesday, and anyway, the forecast for Tuesday is much better than for Monday.

What we did Saturday and Sunday:

1. Finished WP 2 and furnished it with beds and furniture.
2. Removing snow around carpenters garage.
3. Removing snow drifts from entrance to trenches.
4. Setup HT drill with new electronics section. First cleaning run successful.
5. Setting up equipment in science trench. ECM system ready.
6. Repaired broken skiway markers.
7. Active cooling system for the ice core extraction freezer almost ready.
8. German snow sampling.
9. Japanese aerosol sampling and snow experiments.
10. Water vapour sampling, methane sampling, boundary layer and meteorology station working.
11. Work on the “egg” project.
12. Norwegian snow fall Doppler instrument on line.

Ad. 4: The fluid handling system is checked and fluid added. Railing around inclined trench completed. Completed first two cleaning runs with new electronics. Then an issue with communication between console and drill arose. This should be solved tomorrow.
Ad. 7: The new door has been mounted in the freezer. An airflow system has been mounted in freezer. Glycol has been added to the system, and the cooling compressor on the surface runs. We now need to wire the thermostats and the defrost unit. We expect a run-in of the freezer system tomorrow.

Weather Saturday: Sunshine with thin high clouds. For two hours in the afternoon, overcast snow and strong wind. Temp. -5.5°C to -17°C. Wind: 15 - 32 kt from SW. Visibility: To horizon, in the afternoon down to 1 km.
Weather Sunday: Sunshine. Temp. -10°C to -26°C. Wind: 10 - 20 kt from SW turning W. Visibility: To horizon.

FL, J.P. Steffensen

Sunday evening in the dining area: Matthias, Trevor, Bruno, Camilla, Iben, Nanna, Sune and Grant.