May 6, 2018

Activity in carpenters garage and underground

The scaffold in the drill trench.

Many tasks are beginning in parallel in the trenches by several teams.
In the drill trench the floor has been made straight again, and a scaffold at the tower is setup to enable the drillers to cut a slot in the trench ceiling. Ståle has made the special scaffold in the carpenter’s garage/workshop. The slot in the ceiling will make it possible to use a longer drill tower (and thereby longer drill) later in the season. Another scaffold is being used in the ice core buffer to trim the ceiling there. Drillers’ workshop has been moved by pushing it back. This clears the ceiling over it for trimming. At the water vapour sampling site, a team is setting up sampling systems and sample collecting tower.  A team is also working on the horizontal bandsaw for the science trench to make it perform better. Finally, tomorrow a team will begin to adjust the tables in the science trench and set the logging table. We aim to begin logging of the untouched brittle zone cores from last year tomorrow.

What we did today:

1. Constructed scaffold in drill trench as working platform for cutting a slot in the ceiling to accommodate a longer drill tower.
2. Moved driller’s workshop 1.5 m back to trim the ceiling above the workshop.
3. Levelling floor in drill trench.
4. Checking electrical drilling equipment.
5. Trimming of ceiling in core buffer in progress. Trapped cores released.
6. Cleaning snow ramps with snow blower.
7. Repaired gear control on old Yanmar snow blower.
8. Cleaned up in mechanics garage.
9. Setting up water vapour sampling site.

Ad.4: Winch is working, tower is working, surface unit of drill is working.
Ad.5: The number of trapped cores is a few, and they are already logged.

Weather today: In the morning thin overcast with fog. In the afternoon clearing. Some blowing snow. Haze. Temp. -24ºC to -28°C. Wind: 8 to 23 kt from NNW turning to NE. Visibility: 1-3 km, in the evening 5 km.

FL, J.P. Steffensen