'All our bags are packed, we're ready to go...'

It's now the last days for us on the Antarctic mainland, and we are busy getting ready to go back home. All our scientific equipment was packed into containers down in the depot this morning, and now we've just put all our cabin luggage into smaller containers, to be driven overland to the ship tonight, arriving in the Atka bukta where A/S Agulhas is waiting for us sometime tomorrow night if all goes well. The plan is that we will be flown to the ship by helicopter tomorrow afternoon, but the snow storm that we had the last couple of days makes it a bit insecure when exactly we can fly. The ship is scheduled to leave the bay on Saturday, so hopefully they will have gotten us all there by then. In the meantime we will have to wait.. Due to weight limitations on the helicopters the only things we still have with us is our sleeping bag, outdoor gear, laptop and camera... all the rest had to go with the cargo! We've hidden some toileteries (toothbrush etc) and clean underwear in our laptop bags (and chocolate, but that is simply a part of the emergency kit anyway and as Dan would say, 'quite a necessity'), and hope we will see our luggage tomorrow again, but it could be a few days still before we can get to the ship.

The plan is for the ship to be sailing again through the furious 50's and roaring 40's and have us back in Cape Town by 23 Feb. We then have the flight booked so that we are arriving in Stockholm again on 27 Feb.

Oh, the Japanese inspection team made it here finally, on Sunday morning. It was really nice with some visitors and to see everyone excited about it. They flew in with a plane equipped with skis instead of wheels! I have only seen that in movies and so we went down to the airfield to look closer at the plane. It is a Canadian plane (ehrm, I'll spare you all the dull technical details of its design...), and the four pilots were Canadian too. The photo below shows the plane, and Tobbe and Marlie standing in front of it.

Apparently every take over ends with a proper storm, and so did this one.. On Sunday and Monday we had 60 knots wind and white-out conditions, which was just what everyone had been waiting for! During the last three weeks at least we've had lovely weather with sunshine, very little or no wind and only a few degrees below zero, and some people were getting quite disappointed... This is not the weather to expect on Antarctica! Well, at least they got a storm in the end, even though the temperatures never dropped quite as far below zero as desired perhaps. :)

Now the storm has eased quite a bit, which is nice since we spent today unpacking the frozen meat and veg that had to come in to the freezers inside from containers, and backloading all the left over stuff that is going to the winter depot for reserve. It was quite a lot and carrying package after package of 20 kg frozen meat is not an exercise I will miss once I get back from this adventure.

Below is a photo of the sun setting behind the base, taken last night when we went out for a walk after the storm. The new wind turbine is also in the picture, and one of its engineers, Johan, admiring his creation.

That's it from now, we will probably post another message just before leaving the base, whether it will be tomorrow or the day after or even later.. After that we will be in internet shadow again for about 2 weeks..

Cheers, Hanna

Visit to 'Klein Bergie'

This afternoon, just as I was falling asleep over some R programming on my laptop, Daleen phoned the lab to tell us that if we could be ready in 2 minutes, we had a chance of going to CHHchhrrChhrlch! We weren't quite sure whether that was a good or a bad thing, but decided a change of scenery is always good, so we ran downstairs. A group was just leaving for 'the little mountain', which in Africaans is Klein Bergie (pronounced approximately like above), and me, Tobbe and SJ got to go along! We set off on ski-doos with our rucksacks packed with ice axes, crampons, ropes, harnesses and sherry. The little mountain is quite nearby and is a gigantic wind scoop, with a frozen lake at the bottom of it. We put on our gear and started walking down (Lötter, Andre and Etienne were abseiling down one of the icy sides).

Klein Bergie, and its wind scoop. The bottom, as well as the sides, are just solid ice, so we had a great time testing our crampons and ice axes down there!

It was lots of fun to get to use our crampons properly again, there were some interesting crevasses that we inspected thoroughly (from above) and then we played around on the ice or climbed up on the rocks! Below is a photo of typical wind scoop activities caught in one image.. Relaxing and enjoying the moment (Andre), taking photos of absolutely everything, including down into the ice (Alan) or just pretending to be a walrus practising for the next ice marathon (Rory).


What South Africans (and Swedes!) like to do when they are ice bound..

Such a perfect afternoon, and we were back just in time for the braai (still, there's a bbq every Saturday!).

The sunsets down here are just stunning, and they go on forever at the moment. Last night was especially beautiful as the clouds were forming dark striated shadows on the sky. I know we've shown you lots of sky photos already, but here are two more, just so you will grasp how amazing the nature is down here. =)

Interesting cloud formations at sunset

Spooky clouds over the mountains

Skivvies, SuperDARN and proper field tests

Last Sunday we had the big 'Skivvy-day' (Skivvy is 'SouthAfrican' for cleaning), which meant that we all had to help out cleaning and tidying the base and the surroundings. This happens every year during take-over, and every year there is also an inspection team being flown in, from one of the other Antarctic bases, to check that we behave accoring to the rules stated in the Antarctic treaty and that we are not making a mess on the cleanest continent in the world. This year, the inspection team consists of five Japanese, who are currently at the Russian base Nova. I was asked (told?), as an international collaborator (and female, so a minority group, sorry Tobbe!), to have tea with the inspection team when they get here, so I've been waiting for their arrival with quite some excitement... someone told me the nice cookies are saved for this occasion! So ever since Sunday, we have been trying to keep the base and working areas tidy, and to look neat ourselves... but the visit hasn't taken place yet! Due to bad weather, the flight is being cancelled all the time, and every day we are expecting the inspection, and every day we get to hear that it has been cancelled.. Which at least leaves me with more time to practise my Japanese.. One of the improvements made to the base is that a new, klick-in wooden floor has been put in the dining area, you see a picture of it and what the dining area looks like on the photo below.

Dining area with new wooden floor and hungry Antarctic explorers.

Some of the scientists have been busy working on the SuperDARN antennas here at the base (there are 17 SuperDARN stations around the world, monitoring convection patterns in the ionosphere), and today was the first day they got it working again after reinstallations! We went down to the antennas to have a look and met the whole team on their way to celebrate their success with champaign in the radar hatch. A common way to commemorate a successful project it seems!

The SuperDARN antennas.

Tobbe and me took our portable system for a last test yesterday, to see if the signals looked better down at the radar antennas and in the old Astrid-2 dome. With the weather being really lovely we decided to do it the hard-core way and go there on skis. Below is Tobbe on skis, with the system packed into his rucksack and the white 'whip'-antenna attached to his back, on his way to our field tests. In the end the data didn't look much cleaner from down there, so we are going to stick with the system we have at the moment, which is sort-of working.

Tobbe and antenna going on big adventures.

One last photo this time is of the base, taken from the 'Northern Buttress', which is the nunatak opposite the base. The nice thing about this photo, apart from a clear idea of how the base is located, is that you see the place where the dozers push the snow they've been cleaning over the edge of the cliff (big snow pile in the middle), as well as the 'Lolly' to the left, which is the waste water from the base. It has been processed, but is still of a grey colour as it is being thrown over the edge.

From left to right: Lolly, base, unwanted snow, HF antenna, nunatak edge

Sunset!

The last few days the sun has really started to set in the evenings, and it's changing fast. It was only a week ago that we first saw it dip behind the highest peak in the region, Lorenzenpiggen. Soon thereafter, we started getting multiple sunrises and sunsets as it went along the montaineous horizon in the south, and now it's actually setting behind the mountains. The good thing with this is that it allows for splendid photo opportunities in the evenings, such as the one below:



At this occasion (unfortunately it's only slightly visible in this photo, as we were too late..) the red-pinkish light from the sun was catching a very low cloud in front of Schumacher (a low but wide mountain in the left part of the photo) making it shine up in the same color as the sun. You might get an idea if you have a look at the picture of the moon below, taken at the same occasion:




Actually, I think that one of the things that strike me the most here is the sky. We're looking out of the same window every day, with the same scenic view. Most of our photos are of the same landscape, just taken at different occasions, but the sky is just so incredibly big and the cloud formations makes it look different every time. Example attached below :)



A part from that, we're getting ready to go home now soon. In a day or two we'll have to start packing up our containers, and then we're scheduled to be on a flight out of here on the 10th. Given all the problems we experienced on the way here, you can't be too sure about that though. We've been expecting a snow storm to come in for about a week now, but I'm sure it'll show up just before the scheduled departure and stay for weeks.. But, maybe then we won't have to worry about the next gianormous iceberg that is about to close up the bay were we're supposed to back-load all the containers..
As a final note, our research here has recently been documented a bit by our accompanying journalist Tiara's blog, where we are compared to Space Storm troopers, fighting
ionospheric PMS.. http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/tiara/2010/02/04/space-storm-troopers/

Cheers,
Torbjörn

In the surroundings

On Saturday we experienced a full day of no power, as they were going to clean and replace the heat exchangers of the base. We took the opportunity to test our antenna in this noise-free environment by using UPSs and then a portable system where the antenna is running from a 12V battery and data saved to a laptop. The signal was improved but there were still silly things going on, that we haven't figured out why. In the afternoon we decided we also needed some time off, and took some ski-doos and went up to the 'crystal palace'. This time we managed to get all the way to the top of the place, by crossing a small crevasse safely tied up with ropes. The last few days of cold weather had made the bridge across it very stable, and we knew what we were doing (so if there are any worried parents out there, there was nothing to fear!=). Tobbe, me and Etienne had brought crampons and ice axes, so we took the opportunity of doing some ice climbing, while the others slid around on the icy lake that had formed between the mountain tops! It was extremely beautiful with all the ice everywhere!

Me in the crystal palace, on the frozen lake between the mountain tops.

Tobbe climbing on the ice wall. The ice was extremely hard and it was quite hard to get a good grip even with crampons... and no chance to get anywhere without them!

Today we needed another break and so we went down to help out at the 'Smelly' - the snow smelter. The water system at the base works in the following way: Fresh snow is being shuffled down the smelly, where it's melted and then pumped up to the base, which means that people have to go down there regularly to fill it up with snow, or dig it out if there's been a snow storm. It's an ingenious way to supply the base with water and the molten snow is very clean and tastes of nothing! Actually we were told that the water here is so clean that it lacks a lot of important minerals, so that the overwintring team has to fill up on those by eating vitamin pills etc.

SJ and Tobbe busy digging out the Smelly. In the background is the pipe leading the melted water up to the base.

Looking down the Smelly.

But the big great news from today is that it seems that we've finally managed to fix the uncooperative VLF-antenna!! For about a month now we've been testing everything to try to get a better signal, and today Daleen got the brilliant idea of testing to plug in a second preamp, to increase the signal even further! This also meant changing the unshielded dodgy audiocable to the shielded one attached on the second preamp... and the spectra looks amazing! Actually, it looks so amazing that I just have to share it with you! In the plot below, the blue line is the data before the second preamp, and the red one is the new nice plot! The big bump at low frequencies is exactly what we want to see, as that is sferics from lightning around the world, and the vertical lines in there show where the MSK signals should appear. In the blue plot, there are many signals at other frequencies, but not where the MSKs are... but in the red plot, a lot of the disturbing signals are gone, and if you look closely, there are actually small bumps where the vertical lines are!! It's soooo beautiful! =D We got so happy by this result, that we decided it was time to pop the champagne saved for a succesful take over, so we all went up to the roof and enjoyed some bubbles in the Antarctic sun.. such a wonderful feeling!

Our beautiful results (the nice plot is the red one, plotted is frequency vs signal strength from the VLF antenna), where you can clearly see the increase in sferics (the big bump) and stronger lines where there are really supposed to be lines!!

Celebration in the sun on the roof! Marlie, Daleen, SJ and Jani are so happy that we finally got somewhere on this project!

I'm posting one last picture here, from our ski trip we did before dinner tonight. There are skis to use in the base which is great as we didn't manage to fit skis into our bags when coming here! It's really the best way to finish off a nice day of hard work and celebrations.. =)
It was a prefect, almost wind still, sunny evening for some skiing tonight.

We have one more week before we're being flown to the ship (estimated day is 10 Feb). After that we have no internet again for 10 days approximately, but until then we'll try to keep updating you on the actions around the base!