July 27, 2006 Options

[Steve_Stevenoski]

July 27, 2006

Today we would try to cross thing off our many lists. Good science is in the details and there were a pile of details that needed to be attended to. On the seismic side, final preparation of the cage and guns had to be done. Formalizing flight plans and waypoints for the seismic instruments was another priority. Finalizing the computer setups for data collection and analysis also had to be competed. Many times it seemed like one thing crossed off the list just meant two new things added on.

By 9:00 Matt was busy on the fantail starting to assemble the airlines for the guns. Eight 125-foot hoses would have to be cut, couplers attached and fed through the protective tube before days end. The first two boxes contained previously cut pieces. Each had to be unrolled back and forth across the fantail and measured. This was a difficult task because the fantail was full of obstacles. What seemed like a simple straightforward job took a couple of hours to complete.

Dale taught Russell, Matt and I how to attach the hose couplings. Sixteen couplings and thirty-two labels later and the hoses were done. We had to figure out how to get a rope through the sixty-foot protector tube so that we could use the rope to pull wires and hoses through. The initial plan was to hoist one end of the tube with a crane and use gravity to pull the rope down and though by attaching it to a heavy weight. We came up with an alternate plan. Using left over PVC pipe from the antenna stands, we fished the pipe down the tube while it laid flat on deck. By using pipe couplers and duct tape we were able to get the rope snaked through in no time.

Once the rope was though we could start pulling hoses. It was a three-man operation. One person was pulling the rope and the other two uncoiling the hoses. At this point we just had to get the gun cables ready.

Early in the afternoon Harm and indicated that tomorrow we would do a recon flight to get a better overview of the ice and plan for deployment of seventeen instruments for our first seismic survey. This was tentative on our arrival at our starting point this evening.

I had to cut a bunch of ½ plate steel to for one of the Coast Guard techs to weld an attachment bracket to the top of the cage. It took most of the day for the piece to get fabricated, but it was on the cage ready for final welding in the morning.

The coring team from OSU continued to prepare. The Coast Guard removed the coring A frame that had been damaged by the ice on the trip to Barrow to pick us up. They were fabricating a new one and will probably install it tomorrow.

Dale and Mark checked through the bolt gun cables. We were given four to pull for the four bolt guns on the cage. By 8:00 we had all 8 hoses, and 4 bolt gun cables in the tube. We had 4 GI cables to finish and pull tomorrow. We also modified the ends of the protective tube. We drilled holes though the end of the tube sidewall to attach shackles to tie the ends to the cage frame and deck when the cage is deployed.

By about 10:00 it became apparent that the ice in the area that we had planned to deploy might not be the best for the helicopters to land on. It was decided to shift the whole cluster of waypoints for the first experiment about 45 miles north or so. Once there, recon of the ice would occur and initial deployment could start as well.

We would have to see. Russell and Chase worked through the night to untape and untangle a mess of wires and cables for the GI guns. They had a full nights worth of work ahead of them.

Marcy and Steve updated waypoints for the new seismic location. It will be an early start and long day tomorrow.