Hi all - We've been super busy the last few days getting out our last flights of the season, and now we are done! Yesterday evening, Nick figured out that in the last 26 hours we'd flown something like 36 hours (I think I have that right), which you can get at when you realize we'd been flying two planes.
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This is one of the UAVs beneath the moon coming in for a landing at Pegasus on Wednesday.
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On Tuesday, we had our last night flight to Terra Nova Bay, where we flew two planes in a similar pattern as we had done previously. Again, we got some really great data from the flights. I might not have mentioned this earlier, but we also have a digital camera on board, and so if we fly when it's light enough, we also get some really great photos of the ocean and ice at the surface.
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| One of the photos from the UAVs. The large white items are sea ice. You can also see waves and white caps. |
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| Some bergy bits...not officially icebergs, but pieces of sea ice. |
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| Frazil ice. |
There are also a few pictures from the landing. This picture shows the van and a person standing behind it.
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| Landing at Pegasus. |
If you look *a little* more carefully, you can see that person is...
...me! Not bad...you can catch my hat and everything.
Anyway, the landing for both planes went smoothly the next morning. All six of us were out for the landing, as it was to be the last one of the season.
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| Flying high in the sky. |
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| 242 coming in for a landing. |
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| Almost there! |
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| On the ground. |
The weather the rest of the week looked pretty bad for flying in Terra Nova Bay, and John wanted to take the opportunity we had to fly a bit more locally to another polynya nearby. So after an hour or two on the ground Wednesday morning, we turned one of the planes around and launched it for a day flight to the Ross Sea polynya. This flight took about 6 hours, and got a lot of neat data that we can use to compare to what is happening in TNB.
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| Sundogs on the left and right sides of the sun. |
After the planes all landed, and our field work was complete, there was much mirth and merriment on the runway. We shot some photos of all of us with the UAVs (all courtesy of Paul).
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| Me and my five best friends (including the UAV but not Peter) :) from the last 6 weeks. |
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| John and I with the last UAV to land. |
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| I am obligated to laugh at my advisor's jokes. |
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| Me and the UAV. |
Right now we are just packing up and getting ready to leave. We are scheduled to go out on Monday, so keep your fingers crossed. John and I do have one more fun trip ahead of us - tomorrow we are going out to fly the SUMOs with some people from the New Zealand base. We'll be heading out on the sea ice, so maybe I'll get to see some penguins. Stay tuned...
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