12-28

Today we did some more testing of various components and the drillers were able to drill 2 holes for us. They hope to get the rest finished tomorrow so we can start deploying our antennas.

My coworker who boomeranged out of Christchurch when he was 10 minutes out of McMurdo arrived today. He also got to experience some of the recent earthquakes Christchurch has been having in addition to spending Christmas there.

LDB had another major setback recently when the CREAM payload self-terminated. This is a major malfunction as no command was sent to end the flight, the payload was just cut away from the balloon halfway into their first revolution around the continent. It is unlikely they will be launching any of the other payloads this year in Antarctica and it could really hurt the program after the whole Australian incident.

Also if any of you are interested in getting a free trip to Antarctica, you may want to consider losing your reelection bid as a congressmen. Alan Grayson from Florida made a brief (2 hour) stop here today to take in the sites. We weren't able to take the Pisten Bully out because he got to take it for a spin.

I'll post some photos I didn't take.

This is a photo of the traverse team digging out from the storm they were in.

























Here are some photos of the result of the C-17 air drop. They had some issues with parachutes not opening or fully deploying.


































Lastly a photo my coworker took. I'm on the right writing down the results of the cable tests the other two coworkers are doing. We have to wear the helmet in the drill camp and when riding on the ski-doos, which is a bit of a drag because it's bulky and one more thing to take off and put on all the time.