Tuesday 6 December 2011

Twin otter in Byrd!!

Yay! We have a twin otter!!! The weather properly cleared up to beautiful sunshine this afternoon (still a bit breezy, but it seems to have run out of snow to blow at us for a while) and they landed in time for supper (korean bbq pork, vietnamese hotpot beef, and coconut panna cotta with raspberry, ginger and mint sauce). The crew are called Terry, Chris and Pete. None of us were paying attention and Mark (our mountaineer) thought the pilot was called Eric, but Eric (one of our GPS guys) thought he was called Mark, so I asked Terry (head of Polenet) and it turns out he's called Terry. Ha ha ha!

They started off with a pretty strict weight limit, citing a heavy plane, and all our team went a bit pale, but after some smooth talking, and swapping a few Antarctic stories, the weight limit is creeping up. So now we are waiting to call South Carolina at 11pm for the weather report, and a plan for tomorrow will start bouncing around. We are still limited in where we can get to, but with a good forecast there is plenty we can do.

If I get to fly then it'll be a 7am briefing, flying by 8am, so it is time to be organised. Eric has calculated that I am equal to about two of the big batteries that we install at the GPS sites, so I am a pretty economical person to take - fingers crossed. Wherever we go, it will probably involve a lot of snow-digging...

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