A successful flight today!

Ping-pong: A picture from when the Sun was still shining. Frank is playing ping-pong on the snow.

The day began nice and beautiful so we called in the plane. As the plane flew overhead, fog came rolling in from the South. It landed just 2 minutes before camp was engulfed in fog. We couldn’t believe our luck! The plane left as the fog began to lift, and then a thick cloud cover moved over camp. It became very warm: -3.7 °C (record this year) and water began to pool in the tents. It didn’t cool down in the evening so the drillers halted their drilling to protect the ice cores.
Almost one third of camp population was changed today, and since the planned flight for Monday, where also a third will be changed, has been moved forward to Saturday, there will be a significant change to camp life in just 48 hours.

What we have done today:
1.  Drilling. Depth: 278 m.
2.  Unpacking arriving cargo and organizing it.
3.  Introducing 6 new members to camp.
4.  Measuring with CFA system. Measured 13.2 m. Depth: 2492.05 m
5.  Removed rollers at South end of skiway with Pistenbully.
6.  Setting up Dutch bore hole experiment.
7.  Received Skier 41 (91). 6 people arrived and 8 departed. And we shipped 11,000 lbs cargo.

Drillers report: The core quality deteriorated today. A type of cracks began to appear which could be caused either by the high temperatures in the garage or by a mechanical problem. Anyway, the day and evening were so warm that drilling was halted in the evening. Tomorrow, Darcy will analyze the drill head and cutter configuration.

Ad.7: Flight operations went well and the plane left with a full load of science equipment and ice cores and samples. To top off a successful operation, the NEEM skiway was upgraded for higher payload. And the plane was on schedule!

Weather: Clear in the morning, thick overcast and some fog the rest of the day. Temp. – 3.7 °C to - 17 °C , 10 - 4 knots from S. Visibility unrestricted in the morning, during fog ¼ mile.

FL, J.P. Steffensen