Camera Fail!

Update: O frabjous day! After spending my break time yesterday learning about data recovery, I have resurrected some of the lost pictures. I also learned that the camera doesn’t wear-level its memory, which is probably why the card failed. Some of the pictures are corrupted, and some corrupted in amusing ways (like partial translation and […]

Optics Box, Blinkenlights

Yesterday was the first day that the second wave was in the highbay. The second wave consists of Matt. He was supposed to be closely followed by Mark, but the weather hasn’t been favourable (and if he doesn’t arrive late today, he will be delayed again tomorrow due to a Hilary Clinton visit).

Elio opened […]

Cryostat Opening, Miscellany

Yesterday Nick was pretty keen to get the cryostat opened, so that when Matt arrived he could quickly get to all the post-shipping operations (change out optics box legs, inspect for loose screws, etc). Otherwise, odd jobs progressed here and there. I had a few periods of waiting for slow computer operations, so took a […]

Organizing The Highbay

Yesterday was mostly spent organizing the highbay. We opened a ton of cardboard boxes, stashed some stuff outside, and set up the work areas.

There was also some McMurdo-style fun: Ivan broke down on the way to LDB in the morning. We were perched right on top of Scott Base Hill, in about the most […]

HazOp the First

Yesterday we continued the monumental task of setting up the gondola frame and organizing all of our equipment. We went through the basics in the morning, putting on the legs, floors, pyramids, and preparing the inner frame. Our safety officer, Luke, watched and familiarized himself with the gondola and how we work. Then, in the […]

Unpacking

The last of my backlogged posts. Yesterday, the first full day spent on the ice, had us BLAST-Pol first-wavers (Elio, Juan, Nick, and myself) head out to LDB, examine our highbay, and start unloading shipping containers.

Unloading required a lot of working outside, or in buildings highly exposed to outside, so we were fortunate that […]

Deployment

The next installment in my backlog of posts covers two days ago, when we finally deployed to the ice. After returning from Akaroa, we were a bit surprised to find that we were scheduled to fly out the next day. Previously there had been a group that was always trying (unsuccessfully) to fly out the […]

Akaroa

Apologies for the many late updates, but since last time I have successfully deployed to the ice and haven’t had enough internet time for the backlog of posts.

Anyway, three days ago turned out (surprinsingly) to be the last day we spent in Christchurch. A group of us (Annamarie, Stef, Elio, Juan, Nick, and I) […]

Yet More Delay, Unintentional Pun

There continue to be weather delays preventing the trip to the ice. The slight consolation for now is that we’re not in the group that almost flies every day, but waiting for the day after. So, we have a never ending one-more-day-off. In this iteration I did very little: mostly reading and playing with my […]

Revisiting Sumner

Today is when some people with out original-but-really-a-holiday ice date were scheduled to go out. But they couldn’t because of weather. So instead of this being potentially our last day here we will be bumped to even later.

But, what really matters is that Annamarie, Stef, Juan, and I went back to Sumner to spend […]