First pair of antennas down the 40m hole

Today we were able to lower down the first pair of antennas down a 40 meter hole. The drill crew uses a hot water drill to melt through the firn or packed snow. At about 40 meters the firn makes a sharp transition to ice and water starts pooling. They can do the first 35 meters or so in a couple minutes, but the last five meters take half an hour or so. Some of the water in the hole permeates the ice overnight. We were expecting the water in the bottom of the hole to freeze overnight, but to our surprise it was still liquid. It means we have to be extra careful not to lower our antennas too deep as they can't get wet.

Here you can see the drill train in the test bed. Basically they fill up the tank on the left with water and it gets heated. They then scoop in snow in the melter in the middle to make up for the water lost in the firn. The middle rig also contains the boilers and the winch for lowering down the drill. The trailer on the end houses the generator, fuel, and supplies.















The next two photos are of the drill rig in camp while they were getting it ready to take out to the drill site.















There's some driller humor in the photo if you look for it.
















This is a photo of the reamer coming out of a hole. The drillers run a drill down first and then pull it out after it has reached the desired depth. Then they run this reamer down to make sure we have a six inch diameter hole the whole way down.















This is what a hole in the ice looks like.















Here you can see the pair of antennas that will be going down the first hole. The far antenna will be at the bottom and the near antennas is 5 meters above it. The water pooled at 36 meters in this hole so we lowered the bottom antenna until it was 2 meters above the water level.



















Here you can see the hole and the trench going back to the middle of our array.