June 27 - Sunny work day

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 74 Location: Barrow, AK

Well, I woke to another beautiful morning. It was still clear and sunny. The radio said it was about 50 F and expected to be 60 F. It was VERY warm. Everyone kept saying it was NOT very Barrow-like.
Today seemed like a long day (well they’re all long days up here – yuk, yuk, yuk) . . .
I slept through breakfast and then worked on my photo and journal cataloguing before meeting up with Kim and Kirstin about 10 am to go to BEO. We trekked across the tundra again – the tundra seemed very much the same, puddles, mud and mush, and at the same time just a bit different. We started finding little “treasures” along the way, like bones and owl pellets. It was amazing! Once I started looking, there was just bunches of stuff everywhere. In some places there would be a whole hoard of owl pellets – though most of them looked like they were pretty old. I collected one really large owl pellet, maybe one from a snowy owl, a lemming skull, a bit of arctic fox shedding and miscellaneous bits of bone. (I also made sure to wash my hands well before eating when we returned) Smile

My treasures from the tundra

At the tower, we downloaded the measurements and changed the oil in the generator and refilled it with gasoline. The generator recharges the batteries that run the computer that collect data at the tower, since the fancy power generator that was set up is not working.
When we got back to NARL, we went to brunch. The Aerosonde team was there. Aerosonde is located near Melbourne, Australia. More about the Aerosonde later in this post.
After brunch, everyone else went for generator maintenance training and I came back to my room to work some more on my journal and photo uploads. I want to give all of my pictures proper titles and file them properly so I can locate the ones that I want later and since there were so many from the festival and my first day, it took awhile.
So I will take a moment here to tell you about where I am staying. The NARL is the Navy Atmospheric Research Laboratory and this whole complex was once a military installation and though it is not any longer, it is a science camp and the names of places and things have stuck. I am staying at the NARL hotel, which is not really a hotel at all, but a large string of connected trailers, with individual rooms and a community bathroom/shower for men and one for women.

The NARL Hotel

It looks much worse from the outside than it really is. It’s quite comfortable and has wireless networks for computers, satellite TV (where I can still get ESPN to watch Wimbledon and Fox Sports Network to watch the Seattle Mariners), a double bed, a comfy chair and plenty of heat. It’s nice and I have it all to myself.

My Room at the NARL Hotel

See Photo Album for more pictures

Around 4 pm, Kim called for me to come down to the Theatre (not really a theatre, just a leftover title from when it was a navy base) to see an Aerosonde launch. When I got there, the team was still in preparations, so we strolled around on the beach a bit, finding more bones and rocks, until they were close to ready. Then since there was gong to be a longer delay while they went to the launch location to do pre-flight checks, we went to eat dinner.
After dinner, we picked up Kirstin and went to the old NARL Runway, where they launch the Aerosonde. Jake and Dave attached the plane to the cradle on the cab of the truck and Jake took it down to one end of the runway.

Jake and Dave load the Aerosonde

Jake gets ready to drive

Mark drove another truck to the other end to keep cars from coming down. A few minutes later, Jake took off in the truck like a demon and when eh got to about 50 mph, Dave, who had a little remote control for the plane that looked like a game console around his neck, pushed a trigger and the plane just took off.

The Aerosonde takes off!

It happened very fast. The plan for the night was for the plane to fly transects back and forth across the open water, taking pictures and making measurements all night and then it would land tomorrow morning around 5 am. The team went off to prep another launch and we went on about our own business.

To learn more about the Aerosonde check out their website at
www.aerosonde.com

I spent the rest of the evening working out at the recreation center (yeah!) and doing more cataloging of pictures and uploading (yeah).