Well I'm nearing the end of this adventure to Antarctica. I am scheduled to leave the South Pole tomorrow and fly out of McMurdo the following day. We accomplished all that we needed to accomplish for work and the system is running. If I can find the time I may be posting a few more entries before I go to cover things I never got around to, if not I may post them when I get back to the real world.

A shot of some sastrugi. It's fascinating to me to see all the different contours of the sastrugi but I can imagine to anybody who has something other than sastrugi to look at it not being too exciting.















Another type of drill in use in Antarctica is the RAM drill. I believe RAM stands for rapid air movement, but I could be mistaken. Basically the drill uses compressors to force a lot of air through tube to rotate the cutting head as well as blow the snow dust out of the hole. It sounds simple, but the devil is in the details. Anyways, this type of drill is being considered for the full array. I like the drill because it drills down quite quickly, takes only a few minutes to go 50 meters versus almost an hour with the hot water drill. However the drill has a smaller diameter than we would like, 4 inches versus 6, and during the test runs at the drill camp the drill stopped working a little over 50 meters down and the holes we will want are 200 meters. The problem is the compressed air leaks out into the firn, compacted snow, and doesn't blow the dust out of the hole. In other applications they have tried to install liners into the hole, but I don't know that that will work for what we want.



















Here you can see the drill in action, the weather wasn't the best for capturing the plume, but it shoots a good 20 feet into the air. You can see the train of three compressors attached to the drill.















Here's a photo of the testbed shortly before we left it for the last time. You can see what we call the "death ray" in the foreground and the station in the distance. Not nearly as interesting to photograph or look at as a balloon launch, but we're done.














This is a photo of my boss taking a photo from the spot I took the previous photo if that makes sense. He also found the time and motivation to make a carving to watch over the testbed.