Hi Everybody,
Here it is, I flew out of Summit Camp this afternoon at 2:45 pm local time.
The ANG was scheduled for an off deck at 9 AM this morning, but the bets were running 5 to 1 for an after 12 off deck. The betters had it right, they didn't get off until 12:05 pm. They arrived at 2 pm and off loaded fuel and cargo. We boarded and few out and made it safely to Kanger. I've spent the evening walking around the south side of town and taking it easy. We have a 5 pm bag drag tomorrow night so that we don't have to wake up too early Tuesday morning.
I'll write more tomorrow.
He is Risen
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Last Night At Summit
April 20th, I leave home. April 25th I arrive at Summit Camp Greenland. Here it is May 17th and I am less than 24 hours from leaving Summit after completing my 4th work trip. I have seen temperatures from ~ -45 F to ~ -5 F, made some new friends and gotten caught up with old ones. This has been a trip that I will be telling stories about for a while.
I do know that I am ready to come home. The work started out with high hopes and is finishing with a sense of disappointment. I started out looking forward to spending time in the field doing the type of work that I love and now I am tired and looking forward to time off. Looking back over the past month I can see the good times and the bad. I am frustrated that it is ending on such a sour note.
What happens next? The flight is due tomorrow at ~10:45 am local time, so Bag-Drag is at 8:30 am. I will need to set my alarm tonight so that I can get up that early. Once we leave here it is a ~ 2 hour flight back to Kanger and a real bed and a long shower. We will spend Sunday and Monday in Kanger and then have an 8 hour flight back to New York. If everything works the way it is supposed to, I will have 3 hours to grab my bags from the ANG and get to the Albany airport to catch my flights back to Denver. I can't remember when I should be getting back into DIA, but God willing, I should be sleeping in my own bed Tuesday night.
Thanks to everybody that emailed me and I am looking forward to seeing everybody soon.
He is Risen
I do know that I am ready to come home. The work started out with high hopes and is finishing with a sense of disappointment. I started out looking forward to spending time in the field doing the type of work that I love and now I am tired and looking forward to time off. Looking back over the past month I can see the good times and the bad. I am frustrated that it is ending on such a sour note.
What happens next? The flight is due tomorrow at ~10:45 am local time, so Bag-Drag is at 8:30 am. I will need to set my alarm tonight so that I can get up that early. Once we leave here it is a ~ 2 hour flight back to Kanger and a real bed and a long shower. We will spend Sunday and Monday in Kanger and then have an 8 hour flight back to New York. If everything works the way it is supposed to, I will have 3 hours to grab my bags from the ANG and get to the Albany airport to catch my flights back to Denver. I can't remember when I should be getting back into DIA, but God willing, I should be sleeping in my own bed Tuesday night.
Thanks to everybody that emailed me and I am looking forward to seeing everybody soon.
He is Risen
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
72 Hours I'd like to forget
Here we are on May 13th, the night before my friend and boss Ryan leaves Summit camp and we still don't have a working instrument. It all started on Sunday evening, Mother's Day. We had a slow afternoon, figuring that all we had left to do was one last tweak of the alignment of the laser and we would be done. Saturday night we had the best signal we've ever seen from this system, great altitudes and a signal that we could adjust to what ever strength we wanted. We headed out after dinner for the last push and it happened. One laser dead, the other at 1/10th the power it was supposed to. What had we done? What happened? Panic crept into the MSF and things started going horribly wrong.
The one working laser had no power to see anything. Then as I was cleaning out the second power supply, it fell off of its stand and sheared off the two coolant lines on the back of it. By this time it was 2 am (our supposed quitting time) and full blown panic set in. Sunday night/ Monday morning I finally could not stay awake any longer and I went to be at 5 am. Ryan stayed up to try and resurrect one of the lasers. I was awoken at 10 am by the station personnel cutting off the power to my CPAP, and being unable to go back to sleep I got up. Ryan had been busy getting phone numbers and contacts for the company which made the lasers. At 1 pm we had a conference call with them and they went to work coming up with troubleshooting procedures for us. About 2 pm we got off the phone and headed back out to the MSF.
What did we find? Well when we took the covers off of the one working laser head, we found water in a small puddle at the bottom of it. Lasers don't like water, they hate it in fact, except when it used to cool them. We had found one of our problems with Laser #2. The other part of the problem with #2 was that according to the company we needed both of the power units powered on for the electronics in the Co-Alignment block to activate and allow the laser light through it. Since I had inadvertently sheared off the coolant lines, we had turn it off. This had the effect of crippling laser #2. A few hours of work later (about dinner time) we had #2 dried out and ready to try coming back on. We held our breaths and turned it on, it worked. We had resurrected one of the two lasers, now we needed to work on #1.
After dinner Ryan and I headed back out to the MSF and started taking #1 apart. This time when we took the cover off of the laser head, water poured out of it. We had a large leak to take care of this time. While we were waiting for the laser to dry out, we started trying to align laser #2 to the telescope. Nothing we did seemed to make a difference. Finally around 9 pm Ryan fell asleep during one of the adjustments. He crawled into the sleeping bag we have in the MSF and asked me to wake him at 11 pm. I wend back to the Big House and ate my usual Breakfast for Dinner. At 11 pm I wend out to the MSF again and woke Ryan, the way he responded I canceled everything for the rest of the night so he could sleep.
Today we got out here after lunch and performed another purge/drying of Laser#1. This time it seemed to work and mid afternoon we had #1 back online and running. The unfortunate part of this is that Ryan leaves at 10:30 AM tomorrow morning. We still don't have a functioning instrument and we don't know what else to try. We will be out here until late this evening again, hoping that we some how get the system to respond and get a good signal out of it.
More to come tomorrow.
He is Risen
The one working laser had no power to see anything. Then as I was cleaning out the second power supply, it fell off of its stand and sheared off the two coolant lines on the back of it. By this time it was 2 am (our supposed quitting time) and full blown panic set in. Sunday night/ Monday morning I finally could not stay awake any longer and I went to be at 5 am. Ryan stayed up to try and resurrect one of the lasers. I was awoken at 10 am by the station personnel cutting off the power to my CPAP, and being unable to go back to sleep I got up. Ryan had been busy getting phone numbers and contacts for the company which made the lasers. At 1 pm we had a conference call with them and they went to work coming up with troubleshooting procedures for us. About 2 pm we got off the phone and headed back out to the MSF.
What did we find? Well when we took the covers off of the one working laser head, we found water in a small puddle at the bottom of it. Lasers don't like water, they hate it in fact, except when it used to cool them. We had found one of our problems with Laser #2. The other part of the problem with #2 was that according to the company we needed both of the power units powered on for the electronics in the Co-Alignment block to activate and allow the laser light through it. Since I had inadvertently sheared off the coolant lines, we had turn it off. This had the effect of crippling laser #2. A few hours of work later (about dinner time) we had #2 dried out and ready to try coming back on. We held our breaths and turned it on, it worked. We had resurrected one of the two lasers, now we needed to work on #1.
After dinner Ryan and I headed back out to the MSF and started taking #1 apart. This time when we took the cover off of the laser head, water poured out of it. We had a large leak to take care of this time. While we were waiting for the laser to dry out, we started trying to align laser #2 to the telescope. Nothing we did seemed to make a difference. Finally around 9 pm Ryan fell asleep during one of the adjustments. He crawled into the sleeping bag we have in the MSF and asked me to wake him at 11 pm. I wend back to the Big House and ate my usual Breakfast for Dinner. At 11 pm I wend out to the MSF again and woke Ryan, the way he responded I canceled everything for the rest of the night so he could sleep.
Today we got out here after lunch and performed another purge/drying of Laser#1. This time it seemed to work and mid afternoon we had #1 back online and running. The unfortunate part of this is that Ryan leaves at 10:30 AM tomorrow morning. We still don't have a functioning instrument and we don't know what else to try. We will be out here until late this evening again, hoping that we some how get the system to respond and get a good signal out of it.
More to come tomorrow.
He is Risen
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Happy Mother's Day
Happy Mother's Day, from Summit Camp. It has been a week since the last post, a week of plane flights, lot's of work and new people on station. But since it is Mother's Day, I want to give a shout out to my mom, I'm sorry I'm missing mother's day this year. I'm thinking of you and hope you have a wonderful day.
During the last week we finally got our Air National Guard flights. On Tuesday we had a flight and then waited for the second flight that was scheduled. No luck, then then scheduled two flights for Wednesday, again only one showed up. On Thursday we finally got the two flights they keep promising us. We were scheduled for 5 flights during this flight period, but we only got 4. We didn't get everything, but it was nice to get freshies (fresh fruit and vegitables) and our gear. Having fresh clothes (more than one change of clothes) has been wonderful.
On the work side of things, we have had some rough patches. The new telescope didn't fit the mounting brackets, it caused us problems with the polarization of the return light from the beam. It has only been in the last 12 hours that we got the problem fixed. We still need to install the new data acquisition hardware, we are hoping to do that Sunday afternoon.
I wish all the Mother's out there a wonderful day.
He is Risen
During the last week we finally got our Air National Guard flights. On Tuesday we had a flight and then waited for the second flight that was scheduled. No luck, then then scheduled two flights for Wednesday, again only one showed up. On Thursday we finally got the two flights they keep promising us. We were scheduled for 5 flights during this flight period, but we only got 4. We didn't get everything, but it was nice to get freshies (fresh fruit and vegitables) and our gear. Having fresh clothes (more than one change of clothes) has been wonderful.
On the work side of things, we have had some rough patches. The new telescope didn't fit the mounting brackets, it caused us problems with the polarization of the return light from the beam. It has only been in the last 12 hours that we got the problem fixed. We still need to install the new data acquisition hardware, we are hoping to do that Sunday afternoon.
I wish all the Mother's out there a wonderful day.
He is Risen
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Don't Jinx it
Here it is Sunday night, almost 10 pm local and most of the station has gone to bed. Their wild and crazy day off has come to an end and they are getting ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow has the potential to be a crazy day. Why? Because there are two LC-130 flights scheduled for tomorrow. That's right folks, the ANG has started flying again. All of our gear has been palletized and scheduled for the first flight, call sign Skier 11. They are scheduled for an off deck from Kanger at 08:15 and an arrival time of 10:15. I might even be awake by then. Our schedule has allowed me to wake up around 11 am and wonder over to the Green House by noon to catch a hot meal. From what I have been hearing from the Station Manager, we might have our second flight by then, Skier 12. We will just have to wait and see.
Last night Ryan and I "Rocked the Green Beam" again and managed to find a couple of light leaks in the system. Once we took care of the largest leak, our sensitivity went up by about 5x. We can hardly wait for the new gear tomorrow, it should allow us to go increase our sensitivity by 2 orders of magnitude. What that means is we will have a polarized lidar with the sensitivity of a regular aerosol lidar. This will be impressive. From what we have been seeing with the old equipment, which is impressive, we might be moving into a new realm that hasn't been seen before. We can only hope.
It is good to be here and see this type of improvement in the system. More tomorrow after the two Skier flights.
He is Risen.
Last night Ryan and I "Rocked the Green Beam" again and managed to find a couple of light leaks in the system. Once we took care of the largest leak, our sensitivity went up by about 5x. We can hardly wait for the new gear tomorrow, it should allow us to go increase our sensitivity by 2 orders of magnitude. What that means is we will have a polarized lidar with the sensitivity of a regular aerosol lidar. This will be impressive. From what we have been seeing with the old equipment, which is impressive, we might be moving into a new realm that hasn't been seen before. We can only hope.
It is good to be here and see this type of improvement in the system. More tomorrow after the two Skier flights.
He is Risen.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Rockin' the Green Beam
Well, here we are one week down, or at least I think it has been a week. I really don't know what day of the week it is, they have all blended together. We have had high winds, clear nights with -40F temps and days were there is little to no blowing snow. I'm sitting out at the Mobile Science Facility (MSF) and looking west and the horizon looks very far off and crisp today. There are clouds, but the surface is extremely clear. An altogether beautiful scene.
I sent out and email last night to my family that stated "We are Rocking the Green Beam tonight." I got quite the few emails asking what I meant by that phrase. Well, for a long drawn out explanation (LDOE) I am here to work on a LIDAR which uses a Green Nd:Yag laser. Hence the "Green". The work we were doing last night was turning on the laser for the first time to see if we could align it with our new optical setup. To do this we move the beam around in the sky until we see the return in our telescope, aka "Rocking the Beam". So "We Rocked the Green Beam last night."
Some of the other drama that has been going on is the lack of ANG flights. We still have not had any flights into Summit Camp besides the one I came in on. We think that there is a possible flight next week, but we are not sure. So, for the time being, I am still in the clothes I arrived in. Here is an inventory of what I have with me, clothes wise, at the current time:
1 pair blue jeans
1 pair wool socks
1 pair cotton socks
1 pair thermal underware
1 t-shirt
1 polo shirt
2 pairs of underware
That's it. That is all the clothing I have until my luggage shows up. I managed to take a shower yesterday and wash all of my clothes. I wore my Carhartt bib and my fleece jacket while everything else was in the washer and dryer. I have some ideas on how to make that easier the next time I get the chance to do laundry.
Well, it is time for me to get back to work, I'm also writing and doing all of the safety documents for the project. I'll post more this weekend.
He is Risen!
I sent out and email last night to my family that stated "We are Rocking the Green Beam tonight." I got quite the few emails asking what I meant by that phrase. Well, for a long drawn out explanation (LDOE) I am here to work on a LIDAR which uses a Green Nd:Yag laser. Hence the "Green". The work we were doing last night was turning on the laser for the first time to see if we could align it with our new optical setup. To do this we move the beam around in the sky until we see the return in our telescope, aka "Rocking the Beam". So "We Rocked the Green Beam last night."
Some of the other drama that has been going on is the lack of ANG flights. We still have not had any flights into Summit Camp besides the one I came in on. We think that there is a possible flight next week, but we are not sure. So, for the time being, I am still in the clothes I arrived in. Here is an inventory of what I have with me, clothes wise, at the current time:
1 pair blue jeans
1 pair wool socks
1 pair cotton socks
1 pair thermal underware
1 t-shirt
1 polo shirt
2 pairs of underware
That's it. That is all the clothing I have until my luggage shows up. I managed to take a shower yesterday and wash all of my clothes. I wore my Carhartt bib and my fleece jacket while everything else was in the washer and dryer. I have some ideas on how to make that easier the next time I get the chance to do laundry.
Well, it is time for me to get back to work, I'm also writing and doing all of the safety documents for the project. I'll post more this weekend.
He is Risen!
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