I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
Last night we moved through the last of the ice. it was sad to see the last remnants disappear behind the ship. While we were going, cutting through large islands of soft melting ice, the sun gave us a beautiful farewell sunset. It was so vibrant as to look almost fake.
Today I will sleep a little en leer Nederlands. It’s getting a bit of a swell in the sea… I had forgotten how foggy that makes the mind.
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
Back on the ship. It was an amazing helicopter ride from SANAE IV to the ship. I was very sad to leave the continent and couldn’t help shedding a tear or two on the trip back to the Agulhas. We left the base, swooped over the AWS, and then turned and dropped spectacularly over the Nunatuk…those chopper guys, they like to impress and I’m glad for it.
It was also amazing to fly over the ice shelf and see the ice stretching away to the horizon with ragged cliffs. Then the Agulhas. Beautiful on the sparkling blue water, cruising slowly in anticipation of our homecoming. She’s a queen of second homes amongst an array of second homes we have experienced on this trip. A good friend spent much of his life on the sea in the NZ Navy, and as a pilot in Dunedin. I could never understand how he could love it so, as it seemed a very harsh existence, but seeing the Agulhas again filled me with warmth and respect for the ship and the strange existence it offers. It made me realise how lucky I have been to have had a glimpse of life at sea, and I can see its attraction.
I was also sad to leave Zama behind. We had a tight cabin, the boys of B10. 3 of us came back but Zama was asked, just two weeks ago, to stay. I wouldn’t like to have been in his situation – the other over-winter crew had 2 months to train and many more to prepare psychologically for spending 14 months on the continent by themselves. However, Zama had no such luck. He decided to stay, and I am sure he will have an amazing experience. It would have been hard for him not to have said his goodbyes properly to family and friends.
It was also great to finally be able to call Lotte and talk for a whole 10 minutes! ah… the small pleasures of modern naval communications.
Anyway, we wait here on the ship for 2 more days, and then we move out across the Southern Ocean. I hope the seas are good. We were fortunate to have extremely good seas on the way here. I hope we get that luck twice. Leon (one of last year’s winter team) is hoping to see at least 10-metre waves and hopes the ship will surf some… I don’t share his enthusiasm… maybe the trip home will cure me of my new found respect for life at sea 😉
Outside, the crew are loading containers on the ship. There are a few more loads to come from the base, I think they expect to be finished with this tomorrow. They bring the containers down a steep bank cut they made in the ice. At this time the Agulhas is parked with its nose on the ice shelf and the containers are swung aboard.
So, I’m spending the days till we leave watching stupid American tv series, and taking photos. I am practising birdy shots with the telephoto…its kind of like skeet shooting… you follow the bird, trying to pull focus manually as quickly as you can, panning the cam at the same speed, and then pressing the trigger to get the perfecin-flightht shot… It’s great fun and quite addictive – I’m sure if they invented cameras before guns there would have been a lot less game shooting in the world (and consequently more animals still around, and the world would be better documented!). I got a couple of good shots, but I am anticpating that perfect trophy to hang on the wall, maybe an albatross in flight, or two snow petrels in frame with perfect focus.
First Born is sleeping through the day. He worked hard these last days outside.
When I get back to Cape Town I fly from Jo’burg on the 18th of Feb. Spending my birthday mid air 🙂 Then I land in Sydney and I hope I get to see Mr Snow, Zina, and the good Doctor Gillian for a day or so before winging it to NZ. Not long to go now before familiar shores and faces populate my existence… now i just got to strategise the best moment to shave…
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
The unit is installed. All is running, and we are also. Helicopter flight out in 1 hour, the base is like a ghost town. I’m now busy copying Boston Legal series 2+3 for the long wave home…
We will update from the boat, might take a day or so
Need some coffee….
Check these :
Groundhog Weather : [24hrs][Archive]
Congrats to all involved 🙂
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
News news news…we have had our travel plans altered and we leave tomorrow (the 2nd) in stead of the 3rd. This means we have one less day to get it together…
For those interested, here is the circuit we built yesterday (whoever has to do the maintenance on it next year, there is a copy of the full diagram provided.)
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
It’s been a busy few days. We fly out to the boat in two days and so it’s a mad rush to get everything done. Tom, Amanda, and First Born have been very busy outside with the AWS unit, setting it up with the wind turbines and solar panels. It looks fantastic and they have done an excellent job.
It’s been pretty cold these last days, and they have been outside most the time, coming back looking frozen. Today the wind turbine was finally working, and tomorrow we install all the AWS and communications equipment.
In the meantime, I have been inside working on the networking systems (writing scripts etc). It’s been warmer work than that of my colleagues but possibly a little bit more boring! 😉
Still, today was rewarding. I was looking for a way to restart the computer that will be in the AWS. If the batteries fail in the unit (if there is a storm during winter or other reason), then we need a way to power the computer on once the batteries have recharged. There are a number of ways this could be possible with some machines (bios settings for example) but this computer supports none of them. The computer has an on/off button which, if depressed momentarily, starts up the computer. So, we needed a circuit to solve this. After wedging off a plastic panel, it appears that shorting out the button momentarily would also start the computer.
So, we needed a circuit that would do this automagically. I wondered if a relay would do this. A relay will close a circuit when power is applied, but it couldn’t do this on its own, so I emailed some friends. We had excellent brainstorming sessions, and Mr Snow and Matthew Biederman helped shape the idea of what was necessary. But we had no circuit. So I visited Pierre (one of the scientists here) and naively asked him if a series of relays might do the trick. Before I knew it, Pierre had sketched out a circuit on some paper and helped me source the parts. I built it, but it didn’t work… so, Pierre then troubleshot the circuit, which took a good 6 hours or so. I could mumble some agreements, and nod a few times, while Pierre whizzed through the possible causes for many problems we were having with the circuit. Finally, we had a circuit that works. It might look a little crazy, but it does the job.
So now, if the batteries fall below 6 volts, the computer is more than likely to be turned off. Then when the power rises, at 10 volts the circuit triggers some relays, one of which short circuits the on-button for half a second or so and the laptop starts. Pierre is now drawing the circuit diagram and tomorrow we will publish it if anyone wants to use such a thing.
Anyways, off to bed now, a big day tomorrow.
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
I think I-TASC is in the dart finals of the end-of-changeover party… stop… First Born depressed for losing ping-pong in first round… stop… more details tomorrow… stop…
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
Ambitious Elements
Today is the day Remmy and I got ambitious with the antenna building. We decided we were going to go and build a much stronger yagi antenna after being encouraged by the success of the first design. So we loaded up the yagi design program and designed an antenna with 8 elements which gives us 14 dBi gain. The first antenna we had was 7.9dBi and the one we made a few days ago was 12.2 dBi. So if this works, it’s going to be quite a significant improvement.
We decided to use an all-metal boom which changes the design a little bit. With 8 elements, the lengths we had to cut are as follows:
LENGTH BOOM POSITION 144mm 120mm 142mm 179mm 140mm 250mm 138mm 331mm 136mm 423mm 135mm 521mm 133mm 625mm 132mm 733mm
Additionally, we needed what is known as a ‘reflector’ which is 170mm long and placed at 30mm on the boom, and ‘radiating element’ which is 148mm and placed at 96mm on the boom. So Remmy worked on the elements (and reflector and radiator) and I worked on the boom.
All materials are recycled from the HF Radar at the back of the base. The boom was a little more tricky to drill holes in than the PVC and with less room for error but with a little hacking, we got it looking pretty good.
Then we inserted all the elements at and pop-riveted them to the boom.
Last to add was the ‘radiator’ as this needs to be insulated from the rest of the antenna. We searched around and within a few minutes I found a small piece of electrical cable which we stripped and it fitted perfectly over the radiator.
So, now we have a very robust antenna which should deal with the high winds pretty well. If it works (will be tested in the next few days), we will use the PVC antenna inside and the larger one we built today at the unit.
Advice from the bottom of a well, Part II : Coffee, Computers, Correspondence
Coffee
If you are on your way to Antarctica, one thing you will already know is that there aren’t many espresso cafes here. Worse than a continent without espresso is the coffee at the base. By the time you get to the base you are drinking the leftover packets of last year’s filtered coffee… eeek… so you need a solution for your caffeine addiction and here it is
This is a portable one cup espresso maker… you just unscrew the top, clean the filter, pour in the water, add the coffee, and plug it in. It takes about 3 minutes before you have excellent espresso. The important thing about this gadget is that it runs off electricity. You won’t get much of a chance to access the kitchen, so any ‘stove top’ espresso makers are out… a coffee press is also a good strategy but this one is better 😉
Computers
Ok, well the thing is, you need to come with as much software as possible as there is no chance to download software over a 1K connection… If you run Windows or Mac then you just need to try and think what you need in advance and download it before you come… If you are slightly geeky then you are in a better situation. The best idea is to install Debian as it’s super for portability. Once Debian is installed, you need to download all the CD sources from a Debian mirror and copy the contents of these disks to your computer. Then you can apt-get install any software you want straight off your hard disk without needing to download anything…
This is a _major_ advantage, and if you feel like going the Linux way then it would really be worth getting familiar with it before you go installing it and considering this strategy.
Correspondence
If you are coming here, there are a few things you should do before you leave:
* download all your email
* unsubscribe from any email lists you might be on
* set up an auto responder (you will be about 2 weeks on the boat without mail access)
* ask someone to read your email and forward only the necessary correspondence
* setup your auto responder email message to tell all your friends *NO ATTACHMENTS*
* make sure you have a SPAM filter working which is server-side not client-side
Email here is actually functioning quite well (if you use an smtp client… don’t try and use something like Mutt or webmail which requires a direct connection to the net). The above steps are really for managing the travel here so when you arrive you don’t have to download 2000 emails. Once here, you can operate pop-email more or less normally.
If you want to chat with someone in real-time, it’s not impossible over the 1K connection. You need to use ‘internet relay chat’ (IRC). It is a super lightweight system for text chat, and sends minimal data over the network. You can then chat away very easily in real-time, even over this slow connection. Forget Aim, Gaim, MS Chat (or whatever it is), Skype etc…they will not work. If you don’t know what IRC is, then please google it before you come, and train yourself and those you want to chat with before you come here. IRC has been excellent for me, I chat with my girlfriend Lotte a couple of times a week for some hours with occasional timeouts: this has been especially good, considering they only allow 2 calls a week for 10 minutes each (and these are mostly only to South Africa unless you are lucky).
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
Yesterday Amanda and Tom went to Gronehogna to test the home-made antenna we made the day before. I was a bit nervous because I wasn’t sure if it would work or not. Making an antenna out of PVC pipe and old HF Radar elements, with extra bits of gaffer tape to hold it together seemed unlikely to really do the business. Also, we didn’t know they were going until about an hour before they left, so we had no time to make any adjustments. The antenna had to go as is (although we made a quick mounting bracket and mounted the antenna to an old broom handle). First then posed for a picture with the antenna and newly acquired broom handle and tried to look tough 😉
They left in the Challengers which takes a few hours, so in the meantime, First and I prepared the other modems and the equipment he would take to Lorenzo Piggen. The idea was to do the tests in the same order as we had done them 4 days earlier, which was this:
1. SANAE – Gronehogna (yagi-to-yagi)
2. Lorenzo Piggen – Gronehogna (omni-to-yagi)
3. SANAE – Lorenzo Piggen – Gronehogna (yagi-to-omni-to-yagi)
4. Lorenzo Piggen – Gronehogna (yagi-to-yagi)
The home made yagi antenna would be at Gronehogna the whole time and would be the only one used at that site. With the earlier test with the manufactured antenna, we got about 15% signal, yagi-to-yagi between Lorenzo Piggen and Gronehogna, and no signal to speak of using the omnidirectional antenna at Lorenzopiggen.
So, off they went. We decided to do the tests at 1500, and change every ten minutes. We had to decide on this beforehand as they had no radio equipment at Gronehogna that would go the distance, so we had to hope that Tom and Amanda would be there in enough time and we would then do the tests ‘deaf’ (so to speak). When 1500 spun around, we tried the connection. I could talk to First Born at Lorenzo Piggen but we could not talk to Gronehogna, so we had to go with our instincts a bit. I was pretty disappointed that we got no signal on all tests. First and I then agreed we would hold on a little longer, as the new antenna (if it worked at all) would be more directional than the ones we used earlier, so it might take them a little longer to ‘find target’. So we waited an extra few minutes, and bingo – we had 50% signal. Amazing! I was very excited. Just to be sure, I shut down the systems at SANAE so we could tell that this was actually signal coming from Gronehogna and not from the equipment I was using at SANAE. I shut down the modem and First reported the signal was still strong. He then opened a browser (we had a computer connected to each modem) and he could see the web pages we had setup on the machine they took to Gronehogna. First said it loaded instantly! Great!
The trick was, however, that this connection was yagi-to-yagi which is not what we would use in the final setup so we had to quickly switch to omni-to-yagi, the omnidirectional antenna being at Lorenzo Piggen. So First had to change the antenna very quickly as we were afraid that if we disconnected from the yagi for too long, Tom and Amanda would not see signal and would assume we had stopped the tests. To do this he would have to hold the omnidirectional antenna as he would not have time to mount it on the pole. So it was a bit hacky, but it wasn’t worth the risk of Tom and Amanda thinking we had stopped the tests and packing up before we could confirm the final set-up could work.
So First switched the antenna in the cold in record breaking time, with just a few tens of seconds downtime (he asked Luta, one of the crew that went with him, to hold the antenna). I turned on the modem here and ….. 30% signal! Great! First loaded their web page again to confirm the connection and it seems that our homebrew antenna was really doing a great job.
It wasn’t till Tom and Amanda returned that we learnt they had real difficulties setting up in the snow there (there was a storm) and that they didn’t have difficulties ‘finding target’. They couldn’t get the system working for some time, which was why we got no signal through the tests, but as soon as they were set up and turned on the modem they got 50% signal immediately. The fact that they had bad weather there was bad for them but in terms of the signal tests, it was a better situation for the tests than the earlier one as the first test was a perfect day. If we get 50% signal with some snow around, then it’s a very good sign. Tom apparently had also logged onto the IRC (chat) running on my computer at SANAE which is even better! Great.
So we know now the radio systems will work. Additionally, we can build a stronger antenna than this one, one that is also more robust. It shouldn’t take more than about 4 hours to do. So now we await the discussions between Tom and the SANAE management about whether they can get us to Gronehogna before we leave in 9 days….
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
My post today is slightly geeky. I haven’t had enough coffee to break it down to a language that’s easier to understand. My apologies, I will caffeine-up and maybe edit it later.
Today I slept in quite late. I couldn’t sleep last night so I watched a couple of movies and crashed about 4am. Then I got up and took some photos of the area around us through the windows.
I consequently slept in and felt stupid coming in late. Ah well, it happens. So I set to work setting up the processes for sharing data between the AWS and a machine that will be located at the base. Amanda had done some great problem-solving with the logger and it’s running smoothly although we have to solve the comm port issues, but for now we have settled on using an extra computer sited at the AWS. So I twiddled with SAMBA, a networking protocol which, if you know what you are doing, lets you transparently share files between Linux and Windows machines on the same network. Unfortunately, I don’t know what I am doing, having never set up a SAMBA system before, but it wasn’t too tricky. In a couple of hours, we had a working SAMBA network and some scripts that automagically mount the logger’s shared drive on the Linux machine. Coolio. Next up, I have to meet with the network tech here about how they would like me to set up our network.
I’m just hanging out to get outside….I think I will go sit on the roof for a bit….
Brrrr….too cold outside… who would have thought… hmmm… so, I thought maybe I might explain a few little bits of what makes our days here interesting. First up has to be the ever present static. I must get about 50 static shots per day, perhaps more. The air is so dry here that static charges build up quickly. You have to be really careful with your electronics as it can fry the equipment. One of the winter crew just fried their mouse the other day. We have a copper earth wire running around the bottom edge of every desk here, and before you sit down, it’s a good idea to tag that wire with your hand. This means the charge discharges and you get a shock, but it’s better than discharging that shock on your laptop. During storms, the static build up is much worse and you can hear the cracks from several metres away when the charge discharges. If you are unlucky, the shock is actually quite painful, but if you touch a wall quickly before you touch a door handle, or if you quickly rap the earth wire on desks, the discharge normally doesn’t hurt. But at least once a day you are sure to receive quite a whack somehow, somewhere, sometime… Apparently, in winter during the big storms, you can make small arcs of continuous static discharges between your hand and the wall.
Another small interesting part of our day is the 1K internet connection. Actually its faster than this, but they throttle it, so that as much as possible is reserved for uploads by some of the science projects. Getting information can be tricky in this environment and when you don’t have access to it, one realises how much Google augments your brain. You can actually check google on 1k if you turn the image downloads off on your browser and type search queries directly into the location bar. However, the world is full of less enlightened people and I often pass offices where people are checking their email via webmail which chokes the connection… eieieiei…. Another headache is that they have just started turning the net access off during the day, allowing access only between 2100 and midnight. Great. 1K split between about 50 people for 3 hours a day… not so hot… one way we sneak around this (shhh, don’t tell anyone) is that they haven’t blocked certain protocols, and if we bend data around certain network corners and leap some gritty protocols, we can get a plain text version of what we need…
Also, we haven’t had enough water for showers and washing for almost 2 weeks… wooohooo! a small enclosed space, with 70 sweaty bods, and no clean clothes or showers… if the water situation continues, apparently we get the privilege of carrying our own toilet water… good oh…. looking forward to it.
Also, the timing of the day and ‘night’ is odd. It’s 24/7 daylight at the moment. The sun goes lower during the evening but never falls anywhere near the horizon. So you have to make up your mind when you are tired. It’s true. With 24/7 sun you can feel awake at anytime. Some strategise by pulling the blinds down in their room at about 20:00 and then they feel like it’s evening and can sleep at a reasonable hour. I just keep going till I feel tired. Last night that was 4am and even then I could have easily stayed up another hour at least.
These things don’t really bug anyone… just thought you might want some info on the bits and pieces that fill in the gaps of our days.
Just did a little more after-dinner setting-up an ssh server on the Windows machine to allow remote access. Good oh. I will next look to setting it all up in a full demo using the local network with the modems.
Here’s a shot of DJ Marlon (aka ‘the nightwatchman’ – one of the chopper crew) who did a late night mix of speed trance and jazz.
I-TASC expedition 2006/2007
Well, today is Sunday and it’s been a day off. I didn’t do much but sleep, and held a Linux workshop in the top tv lounge. It was a slow day. So slow I think it added to a bit of cabin fever on my part. I really need to get outside at the moment and do something but the winds are still pretty high. I don’t know where the rest of the crew is, I think everyone needs some space at the moment. We have had some agitty times these last weeks but I think the internal dynamics are improving a lot now.
In the meantime, I will write a brief for DJ CRON, watch a movie, and go to bed.
