Twin Otter Fly by

DC3 taking off

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!


Our two Snowcats with the Twin Otter. Not a sight seen everyday. 360 degrees of snow, ice and mountains and me stood in the middle.

Return of the Dash 7

In exactly one week from now the Dash 7 and two Twin Otter planes are due back here at Rothera. They have been away for about 6 months and will be very welcome back for the upcoming field season. On there return they will hopefully bring in mail and fresh fruit and veg after we have been living on mainly tinned and prepacked frozen foods for the last 6 months.
When the planes return there will be plenty of chances to get off base to Skyblue and Fossil Bluff bases and maybe further into the field to do some depo work.

Snowblowing

About three weeks ago myself and Matthew, my fellow vehicle engineer got the go ahead from Head office in Cambridge to start the snow clearing around base and in particular the runway and apron area around the hanger to allow the planes to land when they return on the 15th of October. We were both now about fed up with the consistent poor weather and being stuck in the garage working on skidoo's hence were delighted to get outdoors.
We have been working long hours over the last three weeks and unfortunately woken some mornings to find that a blow in the night and heavy snowfall has put us back where we started, however over the last week the weather has improved considerably and the runway is now clear for the planes which are due back next Sunday!!

Seal Pups

Last weekend we had a beautiful day and the opportunity arose for a trip out on the boats.
Two boats with eight of us headed out to the Islands and ended up at Ancourage Island. There we hoped to see some Weddell seal pups and sure enough on one of the beaches we found six proud mothers with their pups. Unfortunately i do not have a fancy SLR camera and the light was very poor but still managed to get some good photos of these very cute little seal pups.

Mark and Andy do Carvajal !!

A couple of weeks ago , myself and Mark Gorin headed out for what was to be my second and final winter trip of the year. For this trip i had only one expectation and that was to visit Carvajal base at the Southern most tip of the island. With the inconsistent weather that we had been having we decided to set off a day early in order to guarantee traveling the 80Km in a single day and also getting through the notorious McCallams Pass which you need good weather and contrast to do.

When traveling by skidoo across the Glacier you always have to be linked together. You also have to carry loads of unnecessary gear aswell and this is all packed onto two sledges which we towed behind each skidoo.


We had beautiful weather and saw some amazing scenery like this freshly fallen avalanche.


Everything was going good and we were making excellent time. We stopped for a bit of lunch and a drink about half way into our journey. Sitting pretty! Until !!


Disaster stuck as Mark's skidoo snapped a fan belt and ceased up. We admitted defeat and presumed that we would never make it to Carvajal and this was now a week in a tent! However as we had just finished putting up the tent i tried the engine and it had cooled down and un-ceased. We're in!! I fixed the fan belt, we took down the tent and we were on our way, again.

However we didn't get too far before something else happened. After a glance over my shoulder to check the sledge i happened to notice that we we in fact towing something else behind the sledge. Thats odd, i thought and quite sharply applied the brakes and signaled to Mark the field hand signal for, 'Shit, we've lost a tent'. If your wondering how this signal looks it involved me putting my head in my hands! Anyway we had indeed lost our poo tent but still had our main Pyramid tent so we decided that we may as well carry on to Carvajal and no doubt we would pick it up on the way back in a day or two as we expected good weather and our tracks were marked by GPS coordinates.


We finally made it to Carvajal without loosing another item. This is me on top of an old Twin Otter plane which crashed at the base years ago.

There were lots of old fuel barrels lying around which we quite un sightly.

I managed to get on of the bases old Alpine two Skidoos running so thought it would be good to give it a run up the hill to the plane.


Carvajal was the first base in which BAS built on Adelaide Island. It now belongs to the Chileans.
The buildings are very cold inside and are pretty rotten. The Chileans don't actively run the base but do visit once every couple of years just to keep their claim to land in the Antarctic.


Anyway we soon got board of the base and decided to make a move home and maybe do some climbing on the way back. However this didn't happen as Mark's skidoo suffered a massive heart attack and i had to perform open heart surgery. Well basically we were now confined to a pyramid tent until someone else brought us a new engine!! At this point we hadn't found our poo tent either and we suffered winds of up to 50 knots. I won't go into detail, but number 1's & 2's had to be taken outside in blowing snow and temperatures of down to - 15 !!


We now had 3-4 days lie up ahead of us as bad weather had closed in. The i-pods battery's were running low fast so the solar panel came out! Just hang it up and it charges the battery's! Sounds so easy doesn't it! However yet another thing we had broken and we attempted to fix it. A broken wire was found and bodged back together. Were in business and the tunes were once again flowing!

Finally a beautiful day so we packed up and just had to wait for another group of winter trippers to turn up with our new engine. So we waited...........and waited....................and waited.................
We just couldn't understand where an earth they had got to and then we heard on the HF radio that they had slept in and were running late!!! My face, NOT impressed!!!

This was me looking for my sense of humor!

Eventually the new engine turned up at 3pm. I fitted it in record time, we loaded the sledges, got on our skidoos and i said to mark 'drive it like you've stole it'.
We put the pedal to the metal and we managed to get home safely before it got dark for some hot dinner and an even hotter shower. With all the things that went wrong it was the most enjoyable trip I've been on so far and myself and Mark had a lot of fun and laughter.