Thursday 12th December 2013

Today was a magnificent day, +3.2c and 5 knots of wind with blue sky. It doesn’t get any better than that. The day started with email ping pong that when on for a couple of hours. Once I was done with that, I got a trolley and moved the old tide gauge box all the way back down to the transmitter building for storage and then I went and got the old tide gauge inside its new crate and took it all the way down to the RTA container that is now near the helipads.

We cut all the VoIP phones over to the new VoIP server today and so far everything seems to be working fine and we moved every PC across to a different VLAN. I decided I would install the new tide gauge today while the weather was so good so I got the blue Hag and loaded it up with all the necessary equipment and while I was waiting for Richard to have lunch, I went up to the ANARESAT building and restarted the automatic antenna tracking control for the 11m dish that had stopped working some time ago. 

I drove back to the operations building and filled two Nelly bins with rocks and gravel and took them back up to the ANARESAT building and sprinkled it all around the building in the hope that it will speed up the melting of all the snow and ice that has prevented us from getting into the building all year without digging for hours. It really needs to be smashed up and dug out with the excavator. I will see what it looks like in January and maybe after it has melted a lot I can get one of the plant operators to dig it out for me. 

I then drove down onto the sea ice which is looking a bit shabby at the moment and drilled a couple of access holes for the tide gauge. Richard wandered over and helped me using the underwater camera while I used a grappling hook to remove the plug. I cleaned all the debris out of the hole and then raised the plug to the surface. There was quite a large ice fish following all the action that kept getting in the way. I lowered the new tide gauge down the hole and carefully guided it into position. The whole task was over in no time and I spent the rest of the afternoon packing away all the equipment. 

All the snow and ice around the station was melting so quickly today, there were small rivers and large puddles everywhere. The deiso’s spent most of the day digging and pushing snow around with the excavator and bulldozer while most of the other tradies were involved with the annual shutdown of the main power house. After work I went down to the transmitter building and raised my 6m antenna to see if there was any propagation back to Australia or South Africa, but the band was quiet. I checked the other bands and they all were rather quiet also except for a few Aussies chatting. I was so tired I didn’t hang around and went back to the red shed for a shower before dinner.

Mawson summer crew including the project personnel

About Mawson Station

The history of Mawson Station

The coast and mountains of Mac Robertson Land were first sighted and named on January 1st 1930 following a seaplane reconnaissance by Sir Douglas Mawson from the ship, Discovery, during the British, Australian, New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) of 1929-31. Mawson named the newfound territory Mac Robertson Land after Macpherson Robertson, a keen supporter of Australia's role in Antarctica, and took possession in the name of the crown. The mountains around the region were named after honoured Australian explorers and researchers.

The Mac Robertson Land coastline was first charted during the second cruise of the expedition in February 1931. The first landing on the coast was made by Mawson at Cape Bruce on February 18th 1931.

The coast of Mac Robertson Land was again photographed from aircraft during the 1946-47 American expedition 'Operation Highjump'. In 1953 these photographs were used by Dr Phillip Law to select possible landing places on the coast to establish an over-wintering station on the Antarctic continent. Law identified Horseshoe Harbour as the first priority for a station sited on rock.

Approval was obtained to mount a small expedition to sail to Antarctica in the summer of 1953-54 in the Kista Dan. On February 13th 1954, a party led by Dr Law raised the Australian flag at the Mawson Station site.

In the first year a party of ten Australians over-wintered under the leadership of Robert Dovers. By the end of 1954 they had erected the Living Quarters, the Works Hut, the Engine Shed, two Store Huts and a Carpenter's Shop.

By 1966 the number of buildings had increased to more than fifty, a major accomplishment being the construction in 1956 of the first aircraft hangar to be built in Antarctica. Now the station consists of an accumulation of buildings that date from its origins (many of these have been superseded) to the currently occupied AANBUS buildings. Mawson is now one of the longest continuously operating stations in Antarctica and the oldest south of the Antarctic Circle. On February 13th 2000, Mawson Station was 46 years old.

Why we are here

The main aim of the 66th ANARE at Mawson is to conduct and support science in Antarctica. The science being conducted at Mawson contributes to international research efforts within the following areas:

Medical Science, Meteorology, Geophysics, Geomagnetism, Clean air monitoring, Adelie penguin monitoring and research, Weddell Seal Research, Emperor penguin population assessment, Human impact studies, Radio nuclei air sampling, Cosmic Ray research and Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Mawson Cosmic ray laboratory

The study of cosmic rays from outer space commenced at Mawson in 1955 with the completion of the first cosmic ray observatory and has been almost continuous since then, with the exception of a short break in 1978, when fire damaged the equipment. Originally two high zenith angle muon telescopes were used, each of which consisted of three trays of Geiger counters. The astrophysics experiments performed by these two muon telescopes were the first conducted on the continent and activated the birth of the Mawson cosmic ray program. These early telescopes demanded high maintenance and often experienced faults, one of which spoiled the measurements obtained of the great solar flare (23 February 1956). A 12IGY-counter neutron monitor was taken to Mawson in late 1956 and over the years has proved invaluable for recording numerous solar flares. This 12IGY-counter neutron monitor was upgraded to a 6 NM-64 neutron monitor in 1986.

In 1971 construction of a new cosmic ray observatory was commenced which included blasting an 11 meter deep vertical shaft into the solid rock and blasting out a seismic vault and an underground observatory area lined with timber from a demolished riometer aerial, in order to reduce the amount of low energy particles reaching the detector. One underground chamber houses four muon Geiger counter telescopes while the other chamber was used for seismic observations. A third muon Geiger counter telescope was installed above ground adding to the two original muon telescopes and a 6IGY and a 12IGY-counter neutron monitors.

These muon Geiger counter telescopes were used up until 1987 when they were replaced by larger area multi-zenith angle proportional counter systems. The monitoring and data acquisition of cosmic rays was automated at Mawson in 2009 and the observatory equipment is now managed by the Bureau of Meteorology, with additional assistance from station personal.

Both the proportional counters and 6/12IGY-counter neutron monitors count the number of cosmic rays bombarding us from outer space – but the proportional counters are also able to provide an indication of where these particles come from.

So what is a cosmic ray?

Put simply, cosmic rays are “pieces of atoms” (mainly protons and atomic nuclei), flying through space at close to the speed of light. Because these particles have mass, as well as high speed – they can carry enormous levels of energy. Trying to harness that energy has so far been impossible.

These high speed cosmic particles are charged, so they interact with the earth’s magnetic field. This changes their direction so that once they eventually reach the telescopes it’s often difficult to tell exactly where they originated. Current theory suggests that most cosmic rays are produced from supernovas (exploding stars) but there has been some conjecture on this. The amount of cosmic rays detected is reasonably constant all year round, though there are sometimes variations from year to year and over 2 million cosmic rays fly through our body's every day!!

Mawson Cosmic ray laboratory

 6/12IGY-counter neutron monitors

multi-zenith angle proportional counter systems

multi-zenith angle proportional counter systems

multi-zenith angle proportional counter systems

11 meter deep vertical shaft

underground observatory

seismic vault

Wednesday 11th December 2013

Today’s date 11, 12, 13

The wind has dropped to 20 – 25 knots today so John and I decided to go up onto the plateau to replace cane poles that have blown over in the last few blizzards. It was nice to get off the station for the day. The wind was quite blustery at times with some blowing snow, but the temperature was nice to work in. 

We cut a lot of old poles out that had melted down and also dug a lot of old ones out of the ice. It’s good to be cleaning up this pristine environment. I would really like to get rid of all the old fuel drums from up there. Most of them would probably come out on a warm sunny day, but carrying them all back to station would be an issue. We work pretty fast as a team and we had the task finished by around two o’clock and we were back on station shortly after packing up and refuelling the Hag. 

These cane poles snap where they enter the ice which tells you something about the force of the wind. I have suggested they trial fibreglass squid poles and see how they go. While working we had a visit from a snow petrol and a skewer.

The container before it blew away

Tuesday 10th December 2013

I struggled to get out of bed again today. I think I need a holiday. Again it was blowing sixty knots. After going through all my emails I went searching for and found a spare waverider transceiver and set about programming it up to replace the one on Bechervaise Island. Once complete, I got together a heap of bits and pieces together to take out with me to replace the faulty one out there.

After Richard had done ARPANSA and had smoko we headed off out to Bechervaise Island. The sea ice is starting to rot now and is getting a bit dodgy and you have to be careful where you step around the tide cracks. The wind was howling and I had a hell of a time trying to work in it. My hands kept going off without gloves and everything kept getting blown out of my hands or toolbox. I managed to test both solar panels, replace a couple of fuses, test all the diodes and replace the waverider transceiver including its brackets. I fired it up and everything appeared to be working except for the two phones that were still not working. The remote switching was OK, so I decided that was enough and I would log on to the system from back in my office.

 By now I was chilled to the bone and my hands were numb. We drove back to the station and I could log into everything and switch the system on and off remotely, so everything was working perfectly. I notified the guys in Kingston about the phones as I think they may not be working due to changes they have made to the VoIP telephone system. Data was also able to be down loaded from the two penguin weigh bridges and counters. After this I went and did my weekly geo-mag observations and finished just before dinner with some good results. After dinner I updated my blog and then watched two episodes of Home land.

Monday 9th December 2013

Today it was a hard struggle to get out of bed. When I finally got up I slugged about and had a long chat and good laugh with Luc over breakfast. Eventually I wandered out to greet the day and got blown off the stairs by a sixty knot refreshing Mawson breeze. After sorting through all the usual email bullshit I halted the old tide gauge and pack it into the RTA crate. 

By then it was nine thirty so I wandered or I should say forced myself up wind to the ARPANSA building. If anyone has experienced this sort of wind before you will know what I’m talking about. The wind strength is constant and it’s like pushing a car up the road and it's exhausting work. It's also hard to breath in a very strong wind, but what was worse it was syphoning the coffee out of my coffee mug in my hand. I worked with Dave over the phone from ARPANSA in Melbourne to get the main gamma ray detector sorted out and up and running again and I also reset the x-cooler for the spare unit. These x-coolers cool down the detector germanium crystal to minus one hundred and seventy degrees and I think with the warm weather we have been having, when I turn on the rim and infra red heaters to melt the snow off the filter it has been heating the room too much and causing the x-coolers to conk out. These heaters pull about five kilowatts so I reduced the room heating to about fifteen degrees and wrote a new procedure to leave the door shut to the filter room when the rim and infra red heaters are on during a blizzard. 

In the afternoon I went out to Bechervaise Island to take a look at the microwave link that’s not working. The wind was howling and the wind chill was about minus fifteen and I had to work with my gloves off so I got very cold. I discovered a burnt track on a circuit board so I made a quick dash back to the workshop to make repairs and then I headed back out to re-install the circuit board and hopefully get it going. Unfortunately there was a short circuit in the waverider transceiver that took the fuse out; everything else appeared to be working fine. By now I was getting hypothermic and one hand had gone off, so I packed up and headed back to the Hag. I will have to come back out when the weather permits to remove the waverider and either fix it or replace it with a spare unit. 

I need to get this system operational fast as the sea ice is now closed and I have to have it running for the two biologists who will be living out there shortly. So far I have fixed eight faults within the system and now I have a ninth to sort out. This system sends all the data from the penguin weigh bridges and counters back to Kingston as well as providing Internet and telephony for the biologists. Once the sea ice is closed and breaks up there is no way of getting out there until all the ice has gone and a boat can be launched which could be as late as March next year. The reason this system has so many faults is that some wacker left the junction box door open and it got full of blizz which is very salty out here, so now everything is corroding. I was meant to replace all this kit but the guy's in Kingston didn't get the drawings done in time.

By the time I got back to station it was dinner time and I was frozen to the core. After dinner I stood under a very hot shower for about twenty minutes until I defrosted. Later I did some washing, changed my bed linen, loaded the new antivirus software on my laptop and then down loaded the ninety megabytes of updates, installed eighty megabytes of a new version of itunes, a new quick time player, a new version of Adobe..... bla bla bla.........what a world we are locked into these days with computers!! Finally late in the evening I got some time to update my blog.

Sunday 8th December 2013

Today was meant to be a blizzard but it turned out to be a fine day, around +1c with a katabatic blowing around 20 – 30 knots. I dragged myself out of bed to do the ARPANSA filter change only to discover both the main and spare gamma ray detectors had failed, so no sampling could be made.

After a bite for lunch I went down to the transmitter building and conditions on the bands were fantastic and I made many contacts to Australia, Japan, Russia, Finland, Germany, Italy, French Polynesia and many other countries. There were so many people calling me it was like standing in the middle of the MCG with everybody in the crowd calling out to me. I ended up having a very late spa and then going back to my room and spending quite a bit of time messing around trying to renew the antivirus software on my laptop.

 Near the transmitter building there were a few frozen puddles that were frozen when I got here, but with all the melt going on lately, they have melted and all this algae stuff has grown and it releases methane gas bubbles that refreeze in the ice. I have seen this stuff in many frozen lakes around the place. Just another one of those weird Antarctic things.