September 7, 2012 - It's not you, it's the weather

Hi all - sorry I haven't written in a few days, but there honestly hasn't been terribly much to report.  The weather the last few days here has been super interesting and great from a meteorological perspective (i.e., stormy), but that also means we can't get our flights going.  On Tuesday of this week we had Condition 2 weather.  I defined this in one of my earlier posts, but the reason we went to Condition 2 is that the winds were strong and so snow got blown around quite a bit, dropping visibilities to under a quarter mile.  Paul, Peter, and I experienced this first hand when we tried to go to the gym to play volleyball.  The winds were blowing steadily at about 40-50 mph at that time, and we had to walk into a head wind to get to volleyball.  Between not being able to see and trying to stand upright in that kind of wind it was pretty sketchy.

Looking at McMurdo in Condition 2 weather.

 Here's a video of the winds we were trying to face on the way to volleyball.

At any rate, the weather has kept us from being able to get out to the airfield (Pegasus) to get the gear set up.  This all changed yesterday though, when we had a really nice, calm and warm day - temperatures were around -15F, which is good for here.  The Aerosonde guys drove out to Pegasus twice to take gear out, and John and I accompanied them on the second trip.  While the Aerosonde guys got their gear together for their UAVs, John and I went out on the runway to fly a practice plane to prepare for when we fly the smaller UAVs (the SUMOs).  If you recall, these we fly by hand.  John took a few turns with the Flip, but I didn't since the Flip had gotten damaged in the box it was in, and so he was having a hard time keeping it steady.  That would've been a bad first flight experience for me.  So hopefully John can fix the Flip, and I can fly it later.  

The runway at Pegasus Field.

John flying the Flip.

Otherwise, I've been keeping busy with volleyball, spinning, movies, Arrested Development, and of course work!  It looks like we'll have our first test flight tomorrow, and probably our first real science flight Sunday evening.  Then things will get REALLY busy!

Here are some pictures from the last few days.

Testing the Aerosonde UAV outside of the Crary Science building.  A fan is attached to the back.

John, Nick, Cameron, and Paul messing around out at Pegasus.

Me and one of the SUMO UAVs.

Mt. Erebus from Pegasus in the fading light.

Now, what happens in McMurdo stays in McMurdo, so I won't reveal the "who", but someone drove the van off the side of the road on our return.  Couldn't resist posting this.