A successful flight today

Sarah, Anne and Maibritt are busy in the kitchen with all the new food.

Our second flight this flight period arrived today. The plane brought all the rest of the equipment and food! Tonight we were treated with fresh vegetables for dinner, a welcome change from frozen peas, beans, carrots and broccoli.

The equipment in camp is now complete, and ice core processing line is soon ready to cut up the ice core in individual samples and perform measurements. One third of the core cross section, all the way along the core will be packed and sent to Copenhagen as archive piece. The rest will be consumed as samples for more than 10 different laboratories in Europe, North America and Asia.
The drillers are running on a two shift operation and the processors soon have to move on to keep up with the drillers.

What we have done today:
1. Drilling and logging. Fresh cores contain cloudy bands, most likely from Stadial 9,
  some 39,000 years ago.
2. Setting up equipment in warm laboratories.
3. Receiving Skier 21 (96). We've got equipment and food, and we sent out ice core
  (from last year) and 52 empty drums.
4. Cleaning up and removing rollers on the skiway with tiller and dozer blade.
5. Setting up ECM. All equipment now ready.
6. Japanese pit-study completed.
7. Setting up water vapour sampling site.
8. Unpacking arriving cargo.

Ad.1: Drillers report:
Today good drilling was gradually replaced by excellent drilling with six runs producing
19.45 meters of core. The first day of full shifts went smoothly, driller teams are getting to know each other and gradually run times and efficiency are improving.
Surface modem performed fine after the repair yesterday evening. Improvements are being made to the software as needed by Christian.
Occasional slow trip times down the borehole, possibly due to low friction at the top valve allowing the valve to close itself on the way down, seemed to be eliminated with Steff replacing the seal at the top valve.

Drilled 19.45 meters. Driller's depth 1777.18 meters.

Weather: blue sky, some occasional thin high clouds, -24°C to -14°C, 5-10 knots from SE and E. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen