Looking up at the Airplane

Sunday and Monday were happy exhausting days. Jeremy and Stefan went out on sunday to do some local surveys for temperature and currents. Shane and Susanne continue to build up and test the instruments we will be deploying near the glaciers while we had our first test flights with our two planes. 

Peter set up the electric plane first and it was wonderful to see the plane take off, fly with its auto pilot and then have Peter bring it in for perfect landing. We were worried about whether we would need skis (instead of wheels) to take off from the snow but we found that the tracks people had made on the ice worked well for takeoff and landing. 

Stefan and Jeremy came back tired, cold and happy from there first foray on the ice. The temperatures this year have been much colder and so they had problems with getting their generator to start up and work. It turns out that laptops also refuse to turn on in the very cold as they 

have a little temperature sensor which shuts down the hard drive when it detects temperatures below -25C.

When we worked on the gasoline powered plane however, it did not go as well. The gasoline engine did not want to start! After much coaxing with a hair dryer, it did finally start but when we went to fly one of the servos also decided that it was too cold. So we went back to concentrating on getting the electric plane ready. We got a few more test flights much to the delight of all the children in the village. Even the dump truck driver that hauls ice from the icebergs back into town to be melted for drinking water stopped to watch us fly. 

Dump Truck headed to Iceberg to harvest ice to be melted
for drinking water

We are now packing up to head out to the glacier where we will be spending the next three days.

There is no internet on the glacier so this blog might not get updated until we get back thursday evening.