ICE TOWER - saturday 3 november

Today I’m out at station two until 8pm.

The wind was still blowing her best this morning. I took some great video footage of the snowdrift above the ice.

The day started with the usual truck checks although things proved a little harder in these windy conditions.

Sitting alone against the runway lays our air traffic control centre, or tower as they call it here. It's rather small. It seems almost a complete replica of the Lego air traffic tower I helped my nephew Robert build back home before I left. I can't help but chuckle. I can just visualise these little Lego men inside sitting at their little Lego computers.

Fortunately today though I got to visit inside the Lego tower and can confirm that there are no yellow folk present. Just some super cool guys who are sicked about planes.

I quizzed them till the cows came home. I learnt that these massive air force c-17 planes weighing in at 265 tonne only need a minimum of 1.7m in thickness of the ice to land. (It currently sits at 2.5m thickness). Every hour of flight in a c-17 they burn $5,000 usd in gas. Last year there were 430 C-130's missions throughout Antarctica and 57 C-17 trips between Christchurch and mcmurdo. I also learnt that the reason the planes can't fly here during the winter is because once the ambient temperature drops below -50.c the hydraulics on the planes freeze even whilst in operation. They have had an emergency winter landing here before to which they ran gasoline down the sides of the runway to create a visual for the pilot. The twin otter planes are used in these rear cases.

I also discovered that because we are below the 60th parallel our airport runs on the North grid, so effectively the South Pole is in the north direction.

Lamb for dinner. Not for me though. I thought of the boys back home on station; I reckon they've been eating that every night ever since I left.

I played Scott at darts. 16 games. kiwi won one. yeah. I can only get better from here in.

It's 10pm. I'd better hit the hay and rest up for tomorrow's adventures.

See you see you.