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!