Another week has passed by, and summer has officially begun. Works are continuing solidly in the waste water treatment facility. Site service plumbing and electrical connections are ongoing, and this week we have seen the first of the many concrete pours that will consume plenty of labour hours.
This week at Davis: 5 December 2014
This week, under blue skies and warm sunshine (relatively speaking), the Davis team have forged ahead with their programming with infrastructure projects both on and off station, aviation operations to Beaver Lake, Mawson and Enderby Land, Sansom and Hop Islands and lakes in the station operating area. Science projects are ongoing, as are our weather observations, field trainings and station supply activities. This week the station farewelled our highly capable operations coordinator, Anthony Hull (Hully). The station wishes Hully the very best in his latest deployment within the AAD’s Antarctic programme.
Waste not, want not
Drop it like it’s Hop (Island)
This week, a group of tradespersons and one field training officer flew south to Sansom Island to inspect and evaluate the replacement of the existing ‘Melon’ (hut). The weather as you can see in the photos was ‘Davis perfect', according Building Services Supervisor, Dave Brett:
“Light winds, blue skies and the best and most modern forms of transport available, and the pleasure that comes with some extra work. This involved helping change out old fuel drums for new.The drums were flown out by the Twin Otter from station, unloaded on a chosen section of sea ice, and then flown to the island with the helicopters, then back loaded the old drums for the return trip.
This process took us into the early evening, causing us to miss out on the first evening function of the summer season. However, we were greeted back on station by some of our fellow colleagues in their best fancy dress attire to help get us in the mood for what was an exceptional day at Davis.”
Way out in Woop Woop
Another work group headed up to Woop Woop, with Stu S (communications tech) having his turn. On this particular morning we were heading up to Woop Woop to do some work on the new yellow van which was experiencing a power failure.
Travelling in style — as we do so often here — the decision was made to get us to Woop Woop by helicopter instead of facing the six hour round trip of driving up the plateau in a Hägglunds. This was (a) quicker, (b) less tiring, and it also allowed us to get the work done in one day which meant we didn’t have to think too hard about the number of sandwiches and pies to take.
On arrival myself and Josh got stuck into testing and replacing the solar panel on the roof while also adjusting its angle to get a better orientation towards the sun. Thankfully the weather was fairly kind to us as we only had about 15 knots of wind, clear skies and a temperature of about minus ten, a far cry from the winter temperatures experienced earlier in the year where the fluid on your eyeballs would freeze. Val and Lewis meanwhile attended to the angry power generator and cutting in some new flooring material within the van. We did the jobs as required, everything went to plan, we called for a flying taxi and it took us all home for tea and medals. Hoorah!
Ed:Thanks Stu!
MET’s the BOM
In this first edition of ‘Meet the Team’ we have the pleasure of introducing our representatives from the Bureau of Meteorology.
Summer crew
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