BootsnAll Travel Network



Rezerking the Bogies

The big camp at WAIS Divide went in this week. At the moment they are using a portable 10-99 HF radio for communications so, most of the time, we can barely hear them but they sound like their doing alright; at least happy to have finally gotten out in the field.

We finally got another Hercules here at Siple Dome. The flight that arrived here this week was a tanker bringing us fuel for the Twin Otter planes. The Flight Engineer happened to be a good friend of ours from seasons pervious, Keith. He is full time with the 109th NY Air National Guard. They are the ones who operate the LC-130s for the National Science Foundation for their research programs both here in Antarctica and in Greenland.

They brought in a bunch of goodies from McMurdo for us. Among the goodies was a successful trial laundry run. Obviously, we don’t have a washer and dryer here (though there used to be when this place was a big drilling camp). I hate doing laundry by hand and we get our share over the summer at Boccalatte. Plus, here we have to melt our own snow for water which is a time consuming process in itself. So we decided to try sending our laundry in to McMurdo where we have my brother Jesse do it for us. Since we don’t have a lot of clothes out here, timing is critical. We have to time our weekly shower with a flight in the next couple of days. That didn’t happen last week and we ended up doing laundry by hand. When a plane did finally arrive we forgot to give them out Cruise Box (box of stuff to go back to McMurdo). But when we finally got it on a Twin Otter it was back out here the next day on a Herc.

Speaking of showers, today, being Sunday, was our shower day. We take showers in the Polar Haven a semi-permanent structure similar to a Jamesway but of newer design and smaller size. On shower day we superheat the Polar Haven to sauna temperature and hang a solar shower with water in it from the support poles. Then we stand in a mini-berm which is a large rubber basiny-type-thingy that is normally put under fuel line connections to catch any leaks. Nothing special but it sure beats the system we use in the summer (you’ll have to search old blog entries for pictures of our set up at Boccalatte).

Don and I were also going to have Luci cut our hair. Don found a pair of hair clippers in Skua (once again, you’ll have to look at older entries to find out what that is). But it only had a #1 guide on it (the shortest). So it looks like we are going to shaving our heads or doing something creatively short. But last night, a chain of events unraveled our bathing and shaving plans.

In the early afternoon a Twin Otter stopped by with a couple of Scientist on their way to WAIS Divide. They were just stopping for fuel to get them the next two hours to WAIS. After a couple of hours we got a call from them on the radio saying that they couldn’t land at WAIS due to poor weather and were on their way back here for the night. About 20 minutes before they were scheduled to arrive the weather here started getting cold, kind of windy and the freezing fog started rolling in here at Siple Dome. We went out to the fuel pumps at the runway to wait for them. We could hear them flying over but, by now, it had gotten really foggy and they couldn’t land. We got another cal from them on the radio saying that they were going to look for a hole in the fog and try to land in it and then taxi over to the fueling station. An hour later we heard the buzzing of the twin engines and they emerged from the fog. They had landed 7 miles away and just sort of drove here over the snow.

It was midnight by now and we knew that our relaxing Sunday morning was shot. In fact, this morning it was still foggy, windy and cold and the flight crew and scientist were still hanging around waiting. And, it was my morning to get up early to do the weather. By the time the plane got off the ground it was still foggy and cold ( but not too foggy to take-off) and we just didn’t feel like getting snow to melt, filling the solar shower, getting out the berm, and taking a shower. Hopefully tomorrow is nicer weather…or Jesse is really going to be hating us.

As for mechanical activities this week: I successfully re-zerked the bogies of the Tucker. Sounds made up doesn’t it? But it is not, it is an actual procedure. This week the 25 hour preventative maintenance came up on our Snow-Cat (Tucker is the manufacturer). It primarily involves greasing the many moving parts of the drive-train. In order to get grease into bearings with out taking the whole machine apart they are fitted with little grease fittings (or zerks), little threaded things that look kind of like small bolts that screw down into the bearing housing that allow you to attach a grease gun and squirt grease directly into the bearing housing. The fittings are essentially little one way valves which allow grease to go in but not flow back out; at least that is what they are supposed to do. The Tucker is a tracked vehicle. Each of the four tracks are wrapped around six solid rubber wheels (bogie wheels) and the tracks are moved by a cog connected to the axle. Each one of the 24 bogie wheels has its own set of bearings and, therefore, it’s own zerk fitting.

While trying to grease the bogies I found that some of them just wouldn’t hold grease. Either they spit it back out at me or the grease would ooze out around the edges. Upon inspection I discovered that someone had replaced the zerks with the wrong type; a type that tap-in rather than thread-in. In the process of banging the zerks into the threaded holes in the bearing housing, the person who replaced them damaged the threads making it impossible to thread in the right type of zerk. Luckily for me, I found a tap and die to re-thread the holes and some new zerks which allowed me to “re-zerk the bogies on the Tucker”.

We are having a Bad-Iridium day today, which is something between having a bad-hair day and having low blood-sugar. We have finally abandoned the Apollo mission software and are using the phone hand-set as a modem to dial directly to Don’s ISP in Alaska. Yesterday I had some incredible luck with it. I stayed connected for an hour and was able to send mail using Outlook. But, today we are having spatial issues. We can’t seem to get a good signal to/from the satellite even with voice…oh, the woes of a non-polar orbit! So who knows when I’ll actually get this posted.




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