Our field team was lucky to get back on December 30. I learnt later that they were very depressed when the weather went pretty nasty the previous day and the plane had to return back midway without getting them on board. If the weather were bad the next day, our field team, would have been held up there at least till Jan 3, 2011 because of the yearend holidays at the South Pole station.
Bob and I worked on our Iridium antenna. We experimented with it by designing a ground plane for the same and installing it with a slight tilt away from the GPS antenna to avoid interference.
We had a nice dinner and then was a time for a movie. We watched Star Wars 6, Return of Jedi. This movie reminded me of the fact that we at Antarctica, are staying at a colony which resembles a space colony, except the gravity part. This station is designed in a very modern way with parts which can be detachable under fire or any other disastrous extreme conditions. The whole construction even the names of the doors (Destination Alpha, destination Zulu) etc give it an appearance of a space colony.
There is another interesting fact I would like to mention. Antarctica is an amazing place. It’s dry, windy, and chilly. At the South Pole, it is even higher. And the amazing thing is this is such a harsh continent that on the plateau and the Pole, there is no living thing other than humans colonized here. I realized there is not one insect in either McMurdo or South Pole station.
Later in the evening, just before the New Years, I had an idea to create a poster wishing everyone a happy new year.
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