Back in August I was flying from Gnome to Anchorage in a Twin Otter (I was sitting in the back reading Terry Pratchett and checking out the scenery along the way). When we got near Anchorage, I saw this thing. I asked the other guys if they knew what it was, and they didn’t – but it sure looked fishy to me.

Turns out it really is a fishy thing, and I finally found out what it is. It’s an old FRD-10 circularly disposed antenna array. These things were built during the cold war to gather signals for western signals intelligence (SIGINT). This world wide network (known collectively as “Iron Horse”) could supposdly eavesdrop on HF communications from almost anywhere on the planet. Check this page out at cryptome.org to see more pictures of it.

This weekend I’ll be going to a small town called Yakutat in Alaska for a mapping project. What’s so special about this place?

The Hubbard Glacier has advanced enough to disconnect the Russell Fiord from the sea and create “Russell Lake” once in 1986 and again in 2002. The blocking of the fiord threatens the local fishing-based economy, as the Situk river would be flooded if the wall of ice and mud held up. Fortunately in 1986 and 2002 that didn’t happen; each time the natural dam broke with tremendous force (sometimes called “jökulhlaup”, usually but usually when caused by a volcano).

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Ok, this isn’t a story about a real vacation in Greenland. This is more of a brief diary of a trip I took in May of 2005 to various places in Greenland while doing ice research.

This wasn’t my first time in Greenland, and probably not my last, but this was the first time that I actually wrote down the events of each day regularly. I have some pictures to illustrate what it was like to be there and show a little bit about the work that we did while there (that’ll come later). Note: I switch back and forth between present and past tense in what I wrote, so try not to get too confused.
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Over the holidays I went to an island in the North Sea called “Sylt”. Its an island like no other I’ve been on before, where the entrance fee is nearly 70EUR if you’re driving a car. The short ride to the island has no bridge for cars, but has couple of train tracks instead where you get to pay for the luxury of sitting in your car while a train totes you a few kilometers towards the island. Not sure where the logic in that is, but it sure does bring in some money for someone (it was actually built in 1927, so I can understand why no one would want to spend money to build an expensive bridge when you’ve got a perfectly good train connection … maybe that’s what they’re saving up for).

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Looks like after only 3 flights, we’re done for this year. A nasty oil leak on the #1 engine, some instrument problems (PSR), and some cracks in a part of the aircraft (near the bombay) all held us up for a bit; in the end, the cracks worsened and ended it all. We didn’t get done eveything that we intended, but at least I won’t go home without any data at all. Its kind of a letdown to go through so much effort (on the part of everyone) to get here and make these flights, and then not get it done because of a seemingly small problem. I think I would have put more effort into trying to fix it here in the field (if I were somehow in charge) and just extended our stay a bit, but that’s not the way it is going (c’mon, just make a patch!) At least I get to go home early

I left from Stuttgart on Saturday headed for Ushuaia, a town on the tip of South America in Argentina. From here we’ll be flying to Antarctica to study sea ice in a Navy P3 (ours is getting inspected or some such business at the moment). We have several missions to fly, and they’re all about 10 hours apiece (I am not sure why they are not longer, however). Today will be the first time I’ve seen our installation, and will also be my first attempt at fixing some of the problems that I know exist with it.

I was expecting the town to be similar to Punta Arenas, but it’s really different.

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You’re probably one of the many people in this world that has wondered exactly how to get to the Meilerhütte. Or not. In any case, I’m going to relate a little bit of my experience from the hike there and back (there being the Meilerhütte, back being my car). I’m not sure that I can tell you anything useful, except that I decided that King Ludwig II was probably gay, and hiking through the mountains in the fog is probably a lot more fun than you think. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday I’ll be off to the US to go to my sisters wedding and work for a couple of weeks. Getting tickets isn’t cheap from Germany this time of year (end of July, beginning of August), so we decided to wait until the last minute and book tickets from www.ltur.de. They have extremely good prices for various trips to the US and vacation packages to areas in and around Europe. Actually getting the tickets you want can be a bit of a problem, but overall they’re a good deal; you just have to sit at the edge of your seat, bite your nails, and hope that a ticket comes along that gets you near your destination. Not everyone can play that game – and it almost backfired when I booked one ticket, but then couldn’t get a second one until about 20 minutes later for some strange internet reason.

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If you’ve ever flown in a commercial plane, you’ve probably been told to turn off your cell phone during the flight. Now, you have also probably been led to believe that the use of a cell phone could interfere with the operation of the aircraft. Well, I never believed that using a cell phone could have any effect on a commercial plane – and I have asked pilots in the past about it, and they agree (and here is a link to someone else that thinks similarly). So where does this “rule” come from? Could using a cell phone “bring down a plane”? If there really is a threat, wouldn’t it make sense to at least have some way of detecting such devices, for the safety of the passengers?

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All went well during the 7 flights above St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island, Barrow, and the other various places we flew over. Most of our flights were over sea ice, so they weren’t exactly the most scenic flights to go on (unless, of course, you are really into sea ice). Before we left, an article was run in the local paper. I’ll post some of my better pictures when I get a chance…