all photos
[12/12(Mo) troubleshooting]
8am woke up. Today I tried to troubleshoot the weird behaviors of the telescope's motion control. Turned out that one of the switches in the back of the amplifier that drives the telescope motor had been accidentally turned on -- must've been when we were carrying these heavy amplifiers. There was still an intermittent problem with the other amplifier, and turned out the cable for the telescope's manual motion controller had been chewed up when it got caught in the drive system a few days ago. So I replaced the cable and modified my control box - in the process i fried a potentiometer in my manual controller, so had to replace that too. I spent all day troubleshooting things that didn't necessarily have to go wrong ideally, but i was glad that John seemed to have appreciated my work.
[12/13(Tu) -15 C ! Ice Challenger]
6am Woke up.
-9pm Tried to fix the boot with Jamie.
10pm Went to meet the Ice Challenger guys. Even though they had hardly slept during their 69-hour trip, they were energetic and friendly.
Q(Shahla.and.Victor). Is it cold there?
=) Today, the temperature went up to -15 C, which is only a degree below the record high in South Pole history!
[12/14(We) Beautiful day]
The sunlight over the flat plain of the snow made me feel like I was on a pier with an ocean below. John and Pete are scheduled to leave tomorrow, but their flight from McMurdo got delayed, so they may be able to stay here an extra day!
[12/15(Th) Ice Challenger]
3:30am Went back to the station.
4am Fell asleep.
8am Thanks Nacchan for the wake-up call for the teleconference.
12pm Went to lunch to say good bye to John and Pete, but their flight turned out to be delayed, so they have an extra day.
1-8pm Installed fixed brushseal w/ Evan, measured groundshield dimensions w/ Jamie, prepared the Boot for reinstallation.
8pm The Ice Challenger crew talked to us about their trip. Inspiring. These people keep challenging themselves with new adventures.
9pm Went to sleep hoping to wake up early.
[12/16(Fr) Good bye, John & Pete!]
7am Woke up with a bad dream of waking up at 2pm. Snowing today!
8am The groundshield was installed. Cleaned up the huge mess we made on the telescope the past several days. Put on a big blue tarp over the telescope -- it bulged up like a dome! John & Pete, who arrived w/ me 1 month ago, left.
5:30pm Back to station, hoping to sleep.
6:30-7:30pm Took a nap (dreamed about the telescope) until Evan called to wake me up. We measured to make sure that the brushseal on the roof is level so that we're ready to install the boot insulation. Since it was level to within +/- 1 mm, we didn't have to re-adjust.
8:30-9:30pm I tried to take a nap in the lab, but too noisy.
10pm Went back to my room to take another nap, but couldn't fall asleep, thinking too much about what's ahead w/ the telescope tonight.
[12/17(Sa) Denis & Brian!]
1am finally went to sleep after thinking of many inspiring things.
2am Got a wake-up call from Evan and headed to the telescope.
4am Craned on the "Boot" insulation cover.
7am Back to the station w/ Evan and Jamie.
10am Attended the weekly Science Meeting as our team representative.
12pm Our winterover Denis and UCSD professor Brian arrived!
2pm I told everyone to call me when they leave for the lab, but they decided I needed sleep so they didn't call me. I went anyways to raise the telescope to release stress on the brush seal.
3:30pm Back to station and slept. I again dreamed about working on the telescope and tightening screws... I suddenly woke up at 6pm, and then back to sleep and woke up naturally at 7:30pm. Maybe my sleep cycle is about 1+1/4 hour.
7:30 Had dinner w/ Jamie talking about his experience in Japan.
8:30pm Tonight was an open mic night.
10:30pm Went to sleep, hoping to wake up early like 1am.
[12/18(Su) ]
9am Woke up w/ Nacchan's phone call. Wrote to friends.
11am-5pm After brunch, worked to get the mount ready for loading the telescope.
6:30pm Went to sleep so that I can wake up at 1am for a talk by an adventurer who just skied in yesterday from 89-deg latitude South.
[12/19(Mo) Jim Clash!]