tower
Better weather came that evening and we decided to take advantage of it and sacrifice a little sleep. Helo ops started up again at about 10 p.m. with one group going out to one site while I waited on the ship. Then I went out to the second site and part of the first group came over to help. We set up the station pictured here in a reasonable length of time ~ an hour. I'll walk you through the components: we start by burying a 4 foot section of the metal tower. Then we attach a 7 foot section that sticks up out of the snow. The instrument on the top left is the wind gauge - measures direction and speed. The pole in the middle contains the Global Positioning System antennae and the ARGOS antennae to uplink data so we can get it in Chicago. The boom on the top right has temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure sensors in a housing that reflects direct sunlight but allows air to circulate around the intruments. At the base of the tower are two boxes of batteries, each containing 3 car batteries. The other little box is the power junction box. We have yet to add: another temperature sensor down close to the snow, the solar panel to recharge the batteries in summer, and the electronics box that controls everything. While we were setting this up the helo took the film crew and Ben on a survey of the corners of the iceberg so that we will be able to place the stations in the correct position relative to the map of the iceberg. When we finished our setup, we called back to the ship to let them know we were ready to be picked up. They estimated that it would be another two hours before the helo would be back to pick us up.