To the
Ice
March 12, 2006
James: I
woke up surprisingly early Alaska time, about 7:30 a.m. That wasn’t
surprising to me though because, nicely enough, that equates to 12:30 p.m.
Early morning is a horrible time for physics and thus I am not used to seeing the time of day when the shiny thing is low in the sky. Dr. Herman was already up and about. I got suited up in my arctic wear and we headed over to what the call the "theatre." It is a hanger-style warehouse with a garage door and our equipment. The theatre science equipment is stored and preparations can be made before stepping out into the cold. Dr. Herman and I spent the morning laying out all of our equipment and setting up the array. We met a few of the members of the Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab (CRREL) who have been here for a week or two and were also getting their equipment ready for the day.
We had lunch at noon at the BASC cafeteria with the CRREL team. We shared information about our research. The members of the CRREL team were excited about our methods and how our data would turn out. They had been taking data right of the coast out front of Barrow on a 300-meter practice survey last week and said that they wouldn’t mind us using their survey line to take our first data. This was great because it would give us a perfect opportunity to compare new and old methods for ice study. So we were set. We had our bear protection/guide coming to take us out at 1:30 p.m.
Barrow is right on the shoreline and the survey line was right of the coast. Let me be more specific about these distances. From the theatre to the survey line is only a couple hundred meters, less than a five-minute walk. The guide, strapped with his shotgun, insisted we take snowmobiles out to set up the survey line. So we drove out and it only took a half hour or less to measure out our survey line. We came back to the theatre and I got suited up with the equipment. We got everything turned on and running. It pulled the array out onto the snow and the transmitter turned off. Dr. Herman disconnected it and took it back inside. He pulled out the batteries and replaced them and it turned back on.
That was close.
This time we walked out to the survey line. I was at the first stake and Dr. Herman was straightening out the tail of the array when the transmitter turned off again. At -25F, we couldn’t do anything on the ice so we returned to the theatre. After trying the batteries again, we were devastated at the realization that we had equipment failure. We packed up the equipment and went back to our rooms for problem solving. An hour or so later and no solutions we went to dinner and talked to the CRREL team who also had their share of equipment troubles out on the ice. Apparently, equipment problems are not uncommon at super sub zero temperatures. We had pretty much ruled out temperature issues with our problems though.
Dr. Herman and I started to problem shoot the transmitter and we quickly narrowed it down to a battery connection. We finally got the transmitter to come back on. We took it outside for a while just to rule out temperature issues. Once its temperature dropped to the outside temperature of -25F and it was still operating we knew we were in business.
Today we had planned to get our first data on the ice but it didn’t go as planned. That is expected in extreme conditions and that is why we planned a week up here at Barrow. Tomorrow we should be able to get out onto the ice and get that data.
March 2006