F6 camp, home sweet home
At first we had some trouble making "comms" with McMurdo Station. Of the 4 potential modes of communication - radio phone, VHF radio, iridium phone, and HF radio - only the iridium phone was working. The US Antarctic Program has a well-oiled search and rescue program in place: if we don't contact the station a rescue party is established right away to come find us. That's great if we actually need help, but bad if all is well.
Maybe if I hold the radio high up in the air....
The Stream Team (Seth, Mike, and Barb) finally returned to F6 after a long day at work, and we greeted them with a delicious curry dinner and some champagne to ring in the New Year.
The weather has been excellent, right around 32F and sunny. The K-12 outreach and education group are getting their bearings and we are getting used to sleeping with the lights on.
And now... back to work! My research goal this season is to collect some temperature and soil moisture measurements at the streams in order to see how temperature and moisture content affect stream ecosystems. This involves setting up equipment at the streams to record data continuously. With help from some very nice people I am learning how to program and wire dataloggers. So far I figured out how to wire the temperature probes to a datalogger. The next step is to get the program running. To me, this is the scary part and I am procrastinating...
While procrastinating, we took a little hike to Commonwealth Glacier just a couple miles northeast of camp.
Now it's time to focus on programming!
