Title is in reference to the call signs of the flights we had this week 🙂
Monday kicked off my turn for the early morning observing shifts. When we have LC-130 flights scheduled, hourly observations are required to start 6 hours prior to the scheduled take off time with SPECI obs (special observations) if weather conditions change. Often the first LC flight are at 0800/0900, so that means first observation at 0200/0300. Good thing the sun is always up! 😉 These observations continue until the plane is halfway back to McMurdo. So depending on the flight schedule, we could be doing observations from 0200L-2300L, so myself and the other weather observer split the shifts.
On non-flight days, we do synoptic observations (18Z/0700L, 00Z/1300L, 06Z/1900L – we don’t have to the the 12Z/0100L, unless requested).
In addition to weather, on flight days, my other primary duty is running all of the comms, which basically consists of monitoring HF, VHF, and Air to Ground radios to communication with McMurdo, the pilots, and the fellow crew on the ground running the rest of the air operations (We have folks responsible for fuel, cargo, air marshalling, etc.) And in between all of that, I’m helping shovel snow, melt snow to make water, refill the water, general tidying etc. Never a dull moment at camp!
First day of flight ops for me was quite busy! We had two flights on the schedule and when I woke up, we were looking at 1/2 mi visibility in freezing fog and clouds at about 300 feet. That continued for the first few hours before it started to clear out a bit. However, based on the sun at that time, we ran into the issue of “flat light”. Part of my weather observations are determining the surface definition and the horizon definition and with “flat light” it’s incredibly hard to determine the general surface of the snow. You lose determining where there are drifts of snow, flat area, etc. So as you can imagine, it makes operations difficult. During my ~14 hour shift, I did around 20 observations.
Tuesday and Wednesday were full of a lot of early mornings and a lot of flights, so pretty long days. The good thing about working the early shift, as long as there isn’t too dynamic of a weather pattern, I have the chance to “clean” myself (baby wipes/washcloth) and do some sink laundry. We have gotten the showers up and running, but the folks that have been here 2+ weeks get the priority and oh it takes around two-three 55 gallon buckets of snow for a two min shower, so it’s a lot of work involved to take a shower. We do also have a washing machine and dryer, but it’s also 5- 55 gallons to run. Nearly all of my stuff is wool, so hand washing is best anyways. I use a Scrubba bag and have found no-rinse detergent to wash a few things and just hang it up in the wash module to dry.
Weather rolled in at McMurdo on Thursday, so all of our flights ended up getting cancelled (Still had to be up at 1:15AM, since the call didn’t happen until around 5:30AM). So the day ended up getting everything buttoned up so we can enjoy TWO days off for the Christmas holiday.
Christmas ended up being a really enjoyable time! On the holidays, we have two observations, 0700L/1900L, so I did have to get up early to do the 7AM one, but went and took a nap afterwards.
Our Christmas dinner was at 2PM and our chef did a fantastic job! In addition to getting everything thawed out and done in under a week, we had an additional 5 people, since the flights were cancelled yesterday. Some decorations were found and we set up a really nice space.
Another fun thing is we found a tv/vcr combo with a bunch of vhs tapes! So we got that set up and we had A Christmas Story, Grinch, and Charlie Brown Christmas to watch on a fuzzy 13″. Additionally, over our HF radio, we were able to both listen and participate in Christmas carols with McMurdo. My day finished off getting to go out on the snowmobiles (in preperations for some visbility markers in the coming week) and out in the Tucker on the Skiway with our HEO to see how they groom it. Overall, it was a great fun day with co-workers.
As you can see, we were gifted data for Christmas! So I was able to get some photos uploaded this week as well as able to wi-fi call home! We have a Starlink system here, but it’s heavily metered. So for the month, operations come first, but it seems if there is any data left over at the end of the month we will get the chance to connect to it. So, I look forward to the possibility of some Facetime calls back home.
On Friday, I finally got to take my two minute shower! And it was quite glorious. I will probably work to get washing machine laundry done sometime over the week. It’s the little things that can really make a day so much better.
Back to flight operations on Saturday/Sunday, so 1:15AM wake up calls for me. But, in someways it’s quite enjoyable. I have the whole camp to myself and it’s so quiet.
Anyways, going to post this early since it’s going to be a busy weekend and since we have data for the time being. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and looking forward to the New Year. See you all next week!
Happy Holidays Erin! Thanx for the blogs, really enjoying them.