Brass Monkeys: Borek Planes

On Saturday our first planes of the summer arrived. These planes belonged to a Canadian company called Ken Borek and were the first planes on the Antarctic continent this season.
The two planes were a DC3 and a Twin Otter

This is the DC3 it is the company's flagship plane. Built in the 1950's it is in great shape. Two years ago its original radial piston engines were changed for turbo prop engines which cost in the region of 2 million pounds!! Fully loaded the plane weighs in at around 15 ton and has a massive wing span of about 95 feet. Needless to say pushing it into our 100 foot wide hanger was a little nerve racking!

The pilots and air mechanics were the first people that we had seen for over 6 months and they greeted us with boxes of fresh food and vegetables. Ummm!
They all left on Saturday and this is the view of the DC3 from below as they did a fly-by.

There was a small amount of work to be done to the Twin Otter. It landed on our gravel runway on wheels, there it was changed to wheeled skis. It then flew up to our snow covered ski way and was then converted to full skis. This is done as where the plane works for the summer season there is a blue ice runway. This conversion reduces the weight of the plane and allows it to carry more weight which is very important when working deep field.

This meant that myself and Matthew, my work college had to transport fuel and the Twin Otters skis 4Km over the snow to the ski way. It was a beautiful day and really reminded me how special this experience is!