The Adventures of Ryan
We had a party to celebrate Independence Day here in McMurdo. We grilled burgers and gave the galley the night off. We had Human Jenga where I think the record set was 16 boxes. We showed fireworks from the NYC fireworks show. We had fun carnival games people made and cornhole. We also had homemade apple pie and cotton candy.
Not bad when you consider where we are.
Midwinter as it is named aptly marks the middle point of winter. Now it is a race to get everything done before WinFly and more importantly Main Body when summer begins in McMurdo. We had an amazing dinner to commemorate the event. Antarctic stations all celebrate the Midwinter tradition in their own way mostly by coming together and sharing a nice meal with friends.
McMurdo’s theme was under the southern sea. The picture above is the Winter Over IT&C department for 2018.
Field Day is one of the biggest days in the HAM radio world. It is a large emergency readiness competition. I made this promotional picture for it for this year. The even is Saturday and Sunday. I will post some pictures from it here after it happens.
Update 6/24/2018
We tried to make a few contacts for Field Day but it looks like the propagation wanted to work against us. We could hear a little bit of Morse Code but it looked like no one could hear us. And none of us were proficient in code to try to get on on Field Day.
I got go help the AGE department (people who deal with the planes while they are on the ground) setup a heater for the Fuels Department so they could get into their snow filled shack. The lights currently on the ice are the approach lights and the yellow ones are the runway lights they put out the day of a flight.
I got a new contract. I will be headed down to the South Pole in November when the station opens for Summer. I’ll be there till February when the station closes for Winter.
We had to do some work on Crater Hill today. A lot of the pictures are really dark. It’s a good idea of how dark it is down here. This trip was around lunchtime.
A few additional photos from the Ob Hill climb at the last sunset. Pictures taken by my hiking partner.
Climbed Ob Hill to try to watch the last sunset. We couldn’t see it from there but it was still fun.
I got to go see one of the last sunsets before it goes dark for a few months down here. The official last day with sun is the day after I shot these pictures. Soon it will be dark 24 hours a day.
