Finally we succeeded in receiving a plane!

Everybody applauded as Skier 94, after several tries, finally managed to get airborne
with rockets. You can see the flames just below the star symbol.

Today it happened. Weather cleared up, and we were able to call in a plane.
However, the snow from the past few days, and the snap blizzard
yesterday, had wrecked havoc on our skiway. It was sunk. In the morning we
did everything we could to groom the skiway into shape, but you can only
groom so much in a few hours, and there was no time to let the skiway rest
and harden. It was difficult for the plane to get airborne, and in the end
it had to use rockets for the final push into the air. Now we are back to
square one, as the air crew could not upgrade the skiway for higher loads
– and we need those higher loads. Tomorrow we will work on the skiway
again.

On a more happy note, all our new camp members finally made it to
NEEM. All of a sudden NEEM is crowding with a lot of people, bringing with
them new energy to camp. We now enter the process of setting up equipment
in the science trench, so we will be able to begin processing next week.
The drillers are mounting the drill, and quite soon they will drill the first core
of the season.

What we have done today:
1. Receiving Skier 53 (94). 24 NEEM’ers arrived and 3 left. We are now 34 in the
  camp.
2. Begin mounting of the drill.
3. Unpacking arriving cargo.
4. Repairing broken Pistenbully. New steering transducer arrived with the plane.
5. Several groups: Drilling, CFA, gas laboratory and ice core processing had group
  meetings to organise work of the coming days.

Weather: blue sky, -23°C to - 18°C , beginning at 20 knots going to 5 knots from SW
turning to E. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen