Wenhua and I did our first two helo flights! Last Friday, 17 Nov, we went on our first flight to our two AWS at Marble Point, Marble Pt and Marble Pt II. We flew there to checkup on the AWS as it had been about four years since they were last visited and to get Wenhua some practice climbing an AWS in real life.
As can probably be seen in the photos, the weather was gorgeous at Marble Point. Not cold, sunny, and calm winds. The next day, Saturday 18 Nov, we flew to our White Island AWS, which is on Mt. Heine, the highest point on White Island with an elevation of 686 m. Our AWS there stopped transmitting this past winter after a herbie (hurricane-force blizzard) rolled through the area and winds got to around 70 m/s at White Island (~160 mph/~260 kph)!!! The goal of this servicing was to figure out why it stopped transmitting (we guessed the antenna cable came loose), and replace all instrumentation and the enclosure. On Saturday, while the weather in McMurdo was gorgeous (not cold, sunny, calm winds), it was much windier at White Island. When we arrived, winds were around 15-20 knots, which is right at our threshold for working at a site. But we buckled down and got to it. First, we took pictures.
Then, we opened up the enclosure to see if the station was still running. It was, and we also found out the problem: the cable connecting the antenna to the modem had started to backthread and come loose, hence it wasn’t transmitting. Then, we started removing the old instrumentation and swapping it with new ones. The Taylor high wind direction sensor, which is the big black metal instrument on the upper left of the tower, was installed last year but never worked properly.
Given the high winds and relatively intense working conditions, we didn’t get much time for fancy pictures, but Wenhua did get one of me securing the cables to the tower near the end of the visit.
We powered on the station and called Lee on the Iridium satellite phone to see if it was transmitting, and it was! That’s one of the best feelings in field work, confirming that the AWS is actually transmitting successfully. We took final pictures and headed back to McMurdo.
Cheers,
Dave