A routine day with fine weather

A slice of ice core is being micro scanned in red light for bubble shape and micro inclusions.

In the CFA lab the final little adjustments are playing tricks, so now the hope is that by tomorrow the lab should go on-line.
At the logging table, they had a successful adjustment of the table, so that cores don’t break anymore. Today is the national day of Iceland. It is now 65 years ago Iceland became a republic, as they in 1944 stopped being part of the united kingdom of Denmark, Faroe Islands and Greenland. As Iceland is in financial turmoil these days, the camp personnel expressed their wishes for Iceland’s recovery by shouting: “Áfram Ísland” and three hurrays at dinner.

What we have done today:

1. Drilling with the NEEM long drill.
2. Logging. Last bag: 888. Depth: 488.40 m.
3. Processing 29.70 m. Processed depth: 275.00 m. The crew celebrated processing of bag 500.
4. Work in CFA lab., some adjustments are needed at the melt head.
5. Grooming skiway length wise.
6. Making platform for processors.
7. Repairing leaking fuel tank and leaking hydraulic system on Flexmobil.
8. Jeppe has made an upgrade of driller’s software with new nice features.
9. First tephra samples are being studied in microscope.

Ad.1: This is how the drillers report looks today: “Stable drilling. The console software has been upgraded by Jeppe, based on HC’s wish list and Steff’s persistent request. Now we have e.g. distance to bottom, the force between drill and cable when going down to avoid kinks and the video showing the top of casing is now integrated into the advanced screen. Traffic jam on the pull out/logging table. We drilled 24.76 m in 7 runs; driller’s depth 475.65 m.”

Ad.2: The loggers have had a difficult day. The ice cores become more and more sensitive to tiny off sets of the logging table. The cores break if the table is not completely straight. Some time has been spent adjusting the table and the saw. Changed procedures and adjustment of the saw has helped.

Ad.6: The upper shelves in the ice core storage cannot be reached by people. Sverrir is making a platform so that the two people carrying the ice core can reach and push the core onto the shelf.

Ad.9: Based on the detection of layers with volcanic imprints in the ECM, Siwan has taken samples for tephra studies (volcanic ash). She is now studying the samples in a microscope. She has already found tephra particles.

Weather: Fine, between 14 and 18 local time thin overcast -21 °C to -9 °C, 3-5 knots from SSE turning E.
Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen