June 30, 2023

Repairing the Liquid Level Pinger

Chiara producing fresh pasta for the dinner meal.

The acoustic pinger measuring the distance from the top of the casing (top of borehole) to the top of the drill liquid. It is an important tool as we expect a fast change of the liquid level when we hit the bedrock and connect to the water system under the ice. During the first run today it did not work and we decided to fix it before drilling the next core. Any core now could be the last bedrock ice core so we would hate to miss the liquid level change. Martin and Derryn worked on the problem and it turned out to be a broken audio device inside the PC that did not let the pinger signal through. A new computer was found and all the needed sortware installed. And before dinner the system was working better than ever. The drill is parked at the depth 2500 m so the next core will be drilled first thing tomorrow morning.

What we did today:

1. Drilled one ice cores (last run 1137, drillers depth 2645.83 m).
2. Logging depth: 262658.66 m. Processing depth: 2657.05 m bag 4831.
3. Maintained a snowmobile.
4. Removed snow from the entrance to the trenches and the freezer with the snowblower.
5. Repaired the Liquid Level acoustic pinger.
6. Amazing food again with a three course dinner: focaccia bread with mozzarella, homemade pasta and tiramisu. Thanks Chiara.

Weather today: Overcast with light snowfall in the morning clearing to blue sky in the evening, E winds turning to SE 16 kt and decreasing to no wind in the evening. Temperatures -3°C decreasing to -8°C.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

The repaired LL pinger image. Top to the left it is seen that the liquid level is 54.97 m below the top of the borehole. This is the level we aim after giving a very light overpressure of the drill liquid at the base.