Hi all - a lot has happened since my last post! We've had several planes go into the air, one of them not come back, and one instance of McMurdo AAA required. Let's dig in!
On Thursday the 13th the weather was finally good enough to fly up to Terra Nova Bay (TNB), and so we decided to launch two planes to the region, #214 and #230. Nick, Cam, and Peter went out to Pegasus to launch the plane, and Paul stayed back in Crary (our lab in McMurdo) to fly it once it was in the air. John wanted to be out for the launch, but wanted a meteorologist back at Crary to pass weather information to the pilot (Paul). So I stayed back, and checked the weather models, and advised Paul when we got into situations of high moisture or winds as to whether it would make sense to climb or sink to a lower altitude, and whether we should move horizontally. I really enjoyed this a lot. It was good to have a primary role in the mission.
 |
| Me and Paul, working to keep the plane in the air. |
UAV 214 took off without a hitch around 4 pm, and started heading to TNB. Paul and I watched it on the screen back in Crary, and maneuvered it around clouds and high winds. About an hour later, they launched 230, but the prop fell off almost immediately! Cam again put his pilot skills to the test and landed it quickly without incident. By the time the new prop was on, the engine was too cold to start again.
About 3 hours into 214's flight to TNB, we lost communications with the aircraft. After 15 minutes, the plane is programmed to return to its original position - in this case, Pegasus. About an hour later though, it came back online and was still flying to TNB! This is concerning because it wasn't doing what it was supposed to, but we quick put in a flight plan to do our work in case it went offline again. It did end up doing that, and eventually came back to Pegasus, but we did get some useful data out of the flight anyway.
The next day the weather was good again, and so we launched two more planes (#216 and #230). I went out for the launch this time, and both planes took off and all was good. By the time we got back to Crary though, they'd already lost communications with #216, and it was on its way back to Pegasus. About an hour later, they lost comms with #230 as well. Clearly there's a bigger issue at play here than what we thought.
 |
| 216 about to launch. |
 |
| 216 is on its way! |
 |
| There it goes! |
 |
| 230 on its way. |
 |
| UAV 230 flying in the sunset. |
 |
| More sunset. |
 |
| Me on the runway after launch. |
 |
| Nick, Cam, and Peter on the runway after launch. Nick is holding the shock absorber that fell off the van that day. See more below on fun times with the van. |
John decided to make the best of it though, and wanted to do some sampling at some of the neat topography near McMurdo. As long as we were close to Pegasus, we could communicate with the plane. The best part of this though was John decided that I should get to run the missions! I was pretty excited about this. I thought about what I wanted to sample, and where I wanted to go, and how to do it. It was really great for me to do this.
Paul and I were getting some great data all night, sampling the winds near Black and White Islands, and flying through a small high pressure system nearby. I then decided to take the planes to Windless Bight. Windless Bight is about 30 km from McMurdo, and it was a large part of my master's thesis when I studied blowing snow in Antarctica. I was super interested in sampling there. So we took the planes up there, and were taking some measurements first with #216. We were in an ice cloud for awhile, and I was getting nervous because I didn't want the plane to get iced up. We had brought #230 over as well, but had decided we should probably sample elsewhere since the moisture there was too high. Just as we were discussing this though, #216 falls out of the sky and crashes rather dramatically into the ground at Windless Bight. We didn't know what had happened and if icing was a problem, but we got #230 out of there as quickly as we could. It was a harrowing hour though, as we couldn't get out of the moisture for quite some time. We finally found a pocket of (somewhat) lower relative humidity values, and circled the plane there for the rest of the night. We landed 230 at 6 am without incident.
After discussing it, they thought the autopilot had gotten iced up and therefore couldn't find its air speed. It thought it stalled, and went into a nose dive to try and recover, and ended up crashing. I felt pretty terrible about this, since we were flying in an ice cloud. But they told me that we weren't flying in conditions we hadn't deemed reasonable prior to this flight, and that in the end it wasn't my fault. I've learned a lot from the experience, and even though it ended rather dramatically, I'm still glad I did it. It's better to try and fail then never to try at all!
 |
| The last time I ever saw 216. |
They will attempt to recover it with a helicopter once they start flying in October, but my guess is that it will be buried by then. We did get some of the data from the flight though, so not all is lost.
After this day, they decided to take a few days to sort out the communications problem they are having with the planes. Yesterday, John and I had a bit of free time and so we went to Pegasus to fly the smaller UAVs, called the SUMOs. These only fly for 30 minutes at a time. We went out during the day to fly three flights. For these flights, John launches the plane by hand, and I basically run it off the computer. I really like this also, as I'm flying a plane! John used to do manual takeoffs and landings, but, especially in the cold, it's easier to just automate it all.
 |
| John and I communicating before launch. |
 |
| To launch the plane John throws it in the air. |
 |
| There goes the SUMO! |
 |
| Me watching it on the computer. |
We got some really interesting data from the flights, and decided to come back at 9 pm that night and spend the night at Pegasus and sample how the atmosphere changes overnight. Paul came along for the ride, and we took our first flight around 9. This all went well, and we scrambled back into the van to head back to our hut (we were on the runway). I put it into drive, and it made a loud popping noise, and did not sound normal. We limped a mile back to our warm hut (which I was grateful for, since the only other option was walking back in the cold), and radioed for assistance back in McMurdo. Since it is about 15 miles to McMurdo from Pegasus, we needed help. Two guys came back to pick us up on what is called the "magic carpet ride", which is basically a big sled hooked up to a big machine. They put the van on top of the sled and had us ride back. But they didn't want us to turn on the van, so we had to ride back in temperatures around -15F for about an hour. I was COLD!
Anyway, we're hoping to do another flight tomorrow, and hopefully our communication issues are sorted out. Stay tuned!
 |
| The van on the magic carpet ride. |
 |
| Hooking the van up on the magic carpet ride. |
No comments:
Post a Comment