Kornkob’s Corner

Short overview of what Christmas eve was like on Antarctica:

last night was christmas eve, and we had a big party with today off… lots of good food, ( duck with a honey sauce, several appetizers including smoked salmon. and beer wine and booze. later was gift giving , everyone got a gift. then more dancing, drinking and table traversing…. which is going on both top and bottom on a aluminium table without touching the floor, a lot more difficult than it sounds… then caroling and snow sleding… and for me bed, the party probably went another 5 hours after that… merry christmas…

So I’ve had a few questions asked of me about the stuff that Dad is doing.  I posed those questions recently (the are in bold here) and he got back to me today with this:

1) size and contents of a tent, how it stays warm and what the tent city is like.

tents are 8×8 with a double wall, from alaska tent and cost about 1200$ and wiegh about 80 lbs , and not backpackable , about 3 AM the tent is about 40 *F due to the sun (24 hours/day) warming the tent up. it has been as high as 74 *F inside the tent at 5 AM…. we are sitting the tent on 2 inches of blue wallboard home foam… mostly we can’t hear each other except for the sound of zippers opening, that sounds seems to carry quite well, we are about 30 feet away from any other tent in a “grid” pattern so snow machines can clear between tents in the event of snowfalls and drifting snow due to winds, last winter we just stuck tents anywhere and walking proved difficult, so grid streets in tent city now….
2) What a ‘normal day’ is like.   Basically they are wondering what ‘regular life’ things we take for granted are like— your shovel snow to shower story inspired that question…

its adult camp… cooks make breakfast, lunch, dinner, midrats for the third shift, we all do occasional house mouse dish washing, the crew  runs the snow clearing machines to keep drifts etc to a minimum, and to keep the runway clear, there are carpenters and electricians and mechanics here also…

3) weather— what that’s like and what gear you wear to cope with it.

temps run around -5 to +8 *F mostly clear with some clouds , and winds of 5-8 mph… I wear a pair of long underwear, jeans, wool socks that I change every 4-6 hours due to the rubber bunny boots not breathing and causing my feet to sweat, a fleece jacket, and either BIG RED about 8 lbs of down jacket with a coyote fur cedge on the hood, or another fleece and a red windbreaker, so if you see a picture of someone standing at WAIS, wearing a red jacket, its probably me… ( thats a joke) and a pair of gloves, I use carabelas  150 gram insulated gloves that I bought for motorcycle riding in cold weather, they work well…. carps wear brown carharts, some wear black carharts, different countries use different colors for thier ECW (extreme weather gear) shoes can be different too, blue boots with felt liners, a insulated version of a overboot that you can wear standard shoes inside..( they also sweat your feet… ) the ideal boot would keep you warm, allow your foot to breathe and not sweat, and not be real bulky… kinda like the eskimos boot… which I might try making and wearing next year if asked back… if really bad weather big red is the chosen jacket, which so far we have not had… and glad of it..

so far we are at 680 meters or so…. and should see 1000 meters we hope before the end of the season (around 15-24 jan 09) depending on the quality and amount of ice drilled.

Howdy, had a great day yesterday, we did a 3 for 1 drill run… right now we are in brittle ice at around 660 meters and the core handlers cannot cut short any ice as it shatters very easily, so are wanting us to drill only 1 meter long pieces, even though the drill can do 2.7  meter lengths. so we started doing a double run, drop down to the bottom, drill a 1 meter piece,  touch down again and begin drilling with the already cut piece in the core barrel, so as to make a second 1 meter core then bring both pieces to the surface. this procedure has gone well so we tried it with three cores, .95, .95, .48 meter lengths. and it worked.. a combination of excellent straight core barrels, good experimentation, and  a little luck , for the first time ever, a Ice Core Drill cut three cores in one run…. and we are doing it repeatably… merry christmas everybody…..

Looks like they’ve started the serious work in earnest.

howdy, so yeterday a plane came in, (finally, first plane in over 9 days) Tanner was on it, so we have a full crew, just as we go to 2 shifts. monday we go to three shifts and full work . we have been trying to do 2  one meter cores on a single run, drill a core, break it  by lifting about 3 meters up the hole, then replace the drill back to the bottom to begin drilling a second core with the first one still in the barrel. we have not had luck with the procedure we are using, so am changing different \parameters until we either can or can not do it, we are in brittle ice right now and can only bring up 1 meter cores , as the core handlers cannnot use a saw to cut the cores as the ice is too fragile an dbrittle and breaks extremely easily. doing only one 1 meter core will cut into our projected core recovery times as the trip time  (up and down the hole to the bottom) is about 55 minutes right now, with a 15 minute time to actually drill a core.. as the hole gets deeper, the time gets longer.. lots of waiting around for drillers from now on….anyway, stilll in good health, weather good, when we open the back doors up the sun and refelction from the back of th ebuilding makes the “rear deck/porch  area very warm and as it is protacketed from most light winds very very nice to sit out and wait for the core to come up.. unfortunetly, the drill driver (not me, I run the chip cleaner and fluid tank) has to stay in the control room to run the drill, and he loses this opportunity…gotta go, take care everyone..

Pop sent along an email that includes the ‘offical’ report on progress at the WAIS Divide drill station.

howdy, this is th eoffical weekly report sent by Jay Johnson (lead driller) I figured you would like to see what it is we do down here during one week….the fault given in the last part of the report is still with us we have not yet drilled, although today is supposed to be  when the first core is drilled. weather still good, although yesterday mcmurdo said the forecast was bad and cancelled a plane to us with our last crewmember. not much else going on working, waiting, goofing….

> Subject: Weekly report #3
>
> Here is this weeks report.
> If you know of anyone else who would like to receive the weekly reports
> please let me know and I will add them to the address list.
>
> Cheers,
> Jay
>
>
> PROJECT SITUATION REPORT
> DISC Drill 08-09 Season
>
>
>
> Project: T-350-M
> Project Principal Investigator: Dr. Charles Bentley
> Report No: 3 for period 12-08-08 through 12-14-08
> Prepared by: Jay Johnson Date: 12-14-08
>
> ICDS Personnel on Site: Kristina Dahnert
> Jay Johnson
> Bill Mason
> Paul Sendelbach
> John Robinson
> Patrick Cassidy
> Elisabeth Morton
> Dave Ferris
> Bill Neumeister
> Nicolai Mortensen
>
> ACTIVITIES DURING PERIOD
>
> . Patrick, Elisabeth, Bill N., and Dave arrived at WAIS on Tuesday.
> . Reinstalled the winch power cabinet and control room computers. The
> winch powered up without any problems.
> . Assembled the upper sonde and connected it to the cable. Anti-torque
>
> section “A”, instrument section “J”, and motor section “X”. The gray fiber
> in the anti-torque section optical slip ring was found to be bad.
> We switched over to the spare fiber in the slip ring and everything ran fine
> on the bench. Once the drill was on the tower the computer reported
> intermittent problems communicating through the fibers. Rotating the fiber
> optic slip ring caused the problem to come and go, so Monday we will be
> swapping in a different anti-torque section.
> . Realigned the tower with the bore hole. The tower base needed to be
> shifted about 1″ towards the control room. The sonde rollers did not need
> realigning. The barrel connections went together smoothly.
> . Installed the balancing valve for the tower hydraulic system and
> tuned
> it. The tower has a slight chatter at one speed when tilting vertical, but
> not near as bad as it was in Greenland. The tower moves smoothly when
> tilting horizontal.
> . The ground fault protection circuit for the Glassman is randomly
> tripping. Nicolai is working on trouble shooting this.
> . Installed the crown sheave drip pan.
> . Finished installing the new duct work for the chip blower. We will
> be
> using the old chip hopper for the start of drilling because the Cat 953
> loader is still down.
> . On Saturday we ran the drill down the bore hole and touched off the
> bottom. Paul reports finding the bottom to be within .1m of last season’s
> final depth. He was unable to verify it with higher accuracy because the WOB
> sensor was not working due to the communications problem with the fibers.
> . The fluid level in the bore hole is still at 75m! There was no
> change
> in the fluid. level over the winter. This means the ice to casing seal is
> fluid tight at this time.
> . Finished plumbing the fluid handling system.
> . Modified the wiring in the fluid handling batch controller to
> control
> the solenoid valves added this season.
> . Replumbed the barrel pumps so they can be used to fill the bulk
> fluid
> tanks.
> . Plumbed the bulk fluid tanks, filled them with drilling fluid, and
> connected them to the fluid handling system.
> . Powered up both cranes and tested them.
> . The drill side of the arch is about 3″ narrower at its mid point
> than
> it was last. season. With this much floor movement we had to move one of the
> crane rails so the cranes could traverse the length of the arch with out
> binding.
> . Installed and aligned the core transfer table, which includes the
> new
> FED and core tray rests on the core handing side.
> . Cleaned and inspected the slot drip pans. The casing has risen, or
> the
> slot has settled depending on how you want to look at it, about 4″-6″.
> We still have plenty of clearance between the drill and the casing so the
> casing does not need to be shortened. However, some shimming needs to be
> done on the piece of drip pan surrounding the casing to ensure drilling
> fluid flows into the bore hole.
> . Powered up and tested the centrifuge. The centrifuge needed to be
> leveled due to the floor heaving.
> . Powered up and tested the screen cleaning system.
> . Calibrated both air monitors
>
> COMMENTS
> (Problems, Concerns, Recommendations, Etc.)
>
> . On Saturday we were going to drill the first core, however the
> generator went down in the early morning on Saturday and the power outage
> went undetected for several hours. It took until late morning to get the
> core handling computers and refrigeration units back up and running so we
> decided to delay drilling the first core until Monday.
>