Welcome to the Land of the Midnight Sun

Greetings from Antarctica!

After five days of weather delays, we finally made it to Antarctica. Typically you take a C-17 down to the ice, but because of all the delays we ended up taking a Kiwi 757. At first I thought it was going to be a real nightmare of a trip sitting three abreast in all our polar gear, but our group ended up sitting in business class section for no reason other than the fact that we were the last ones to get on the place. The thought of taking business class to Antarctica is quite humorous and probably only the second time in my life I've flown business class--ever.

Riding business class to McMurdo. You can see the poor saps crammed in the back.

The arrival this time wasn't as surreal for me as the first time, but none-the-less it was an experience I will remember for the rest of my life. Below is a pic of our team fresh off the plane. Four of us are from KU, one from University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and our project manager is from NASA. All together, we have a really great team, and I'm looking forward to working with them for the next six weeks (or at least as much as one can given the fact that we are in a remote location and away from family for the holidays).

From left to right: Jordan Sprick (KU), Carl Leuschen (KU), me, Jim Rood (KU), Chris Larsen (UAF), John Woods (NASA)

Since arriving we've pretty much been working non-stop trying to get the aircraft and instruments ready, and when not working we've been taking care of our mandatory training. This afternoon was our first time we had some time to catch up on life/work back home (Happy Thanksgiving back home by the way). We will hopefully have the install complete by tomorrow and be ready for flights on Monday. 

Our antenna array installed between the landing gear of the aircraft. Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano in the world.

We work out at the airfield which is about 3 miles outside of McMurdo base. We have our own hangar and there is a galley and head out there...though both are about a quarter mile from our RAC tent. Luckily Chris brought his fat tire bike which has turned a 30 minute walk to and from the the bathroom to a 10 minute round trip bike ride.

McMurdo basically shuts down this weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to finish the install before our big dinner tomorrow night. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we have good weather Sunday so we can enjoy some recreational activities on our day off.