Alone Again
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The wind continues to blow. Yesterday it blew from the north and today its blowing from the south so that everything that didn’t fill in yesterday is getting filled in today. The snow fences I set up work alright but as was the case today, the wind picked up at night and the fences were in the wrong place.
We have had some Twin Otter activity the past couple of days. They have been out this way moving Science groups from one camp to another. A lot of science groups try to get back to the states for the holidays. I-205 left on Saturday to go back to McMurdo so we are back to just the three of us here at Siple Dome.
My big excitement of the week was fixing a Herman Nelson and doing the 250 hour preventative maintenance on the Tucker. Sounds fun, huh? The Hermie has been giving us problems since put-in and finally just quite working. The problem was in the burner which also houses the magneto and the fuel pump which both turned out to be malfunctioning. Luckily we had both parts on hand. The 250 on the Tucker was just a more extensive lubing than the regular 25 hr plus a series of system checks like the battery, brakes and headlights (kind of ironic, that one). The only problems I ran into were minor. The oil drain plug is over one of the drive shafts and my attempt to bypass it failed miserably spewing oil everywhere. I recovered most of it in the end. The tracks were also in need of tightening which was kind of fun.
Wish I had more to write about but it has been a pretty uneventful week.
Luke