End of Winter First Firsts

It finally happened, our six months of peace and quiet, from when the USAP ship Nathaniel B. Palmer left us on 12th April, to the arrival of the first Kenn Borek Air planes today, is over. 

First Fruit

I started hourly met obs for the pilots at 05:30 on Sunday morning, for them to cancel for the day a few hours later. Rinse and repeat for Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday morning, just when I was nearing a sense of humour failure, one of the pilots rang the Iridium phone saying, 'We'll be airborne in 30 mins'!. Our usual motto is 'hurry up and wait', but in this case it seemed more like 'wait... hurry up!'. I passed the message on to the mechs, who started clearing last night's snow off the runway, and to Geek-Boy who went to man the radios in the tower. Hourly met obs continued, the runway lights were put out, the search and rescue boat was launched and diggers drove up and down the runway removing snow and spraying grit - base was quite the hive of activity.

The called PNR (Point of No Return) about an hour away from base, at which point everyone has to be off the runway, and this gave us time to gather cameras and find a good view point. I was up in the tower doing a met ob when I saw the first plane over Stokes Peaks, and stayed there to photograph it on its way in.

First Face

The main excitement isn't of course the planes themselves, but the things they bring with them, e.g. freshies and people. They delivered a good haul of apples, oranges, onions and carrots for the chef, as well as a Toblerone and Coke for Geek-Boy and a stash of Pringles for the bar. As this flight came from South America rather than the Falkland Islands it didn't have any mail on it, and we're currently estimating 6th November for that excitment. The handsome chap on the right was the first new face I had seen in six months; if he looks a little frightened, it is probably because some random girl he'd never met wanted to take his photo, when all he wanted to do was to sit down and eat his dinner in peace after a 5 hour flight. I'm afraid in all the excitement his name escaped me, but he is an engineer for one of the Basler planes and will be spending the Austral summer with the plane in Antarctica, servicing it and fixing it as required.

First Flight