Joe Mastroianni is looking forward more than ever to Thanksgiving, reports EE Times this week.
After more than three weeks of 12-hour workdays, technical breakdowns and weather-induced project delays at work sites surrounding Antarctica’s McMurdo base camp, the intrepid engineer was headed back home last week to northern California, his mouth set for the holiday feast and his appetite for adventure satiated for now.
“I’m currently scheduled to be on a C-17 [military aircraft] north in two days,” Mastroianni wrote from Antarctica last Tuesday. “As much as I enjoy coming to the ice, there was a bit too much in the way of ‘adventure’ this year. I’m looking forward to some nice, relaxing bumper-to-bumper Silicon Valley traffic.”
He and his team had helicoptered in to the camp closest to Bonney Riegel, a 1,000-foot hill overlooking a frozen inland lake, to put up a Wi-Fi Webcam. Designed for penguin observation, the Webcam would also be used by another scientist to study Taylor Glacier at the far end of Lake Bonney. Mastroianni made some modifications to the unit to provide network access for that camp as well as for “helo ops.” The team is using an 11-dB Yagi antenna with a 1-W amplifier that connect via line-of-sight to an 802.11 repeater station on Mount Voslips, a 25- to 30-mile run.
The schedule for the Bonney Webcam deployment had already been reset because of a severe storm, so time was running out to get it deployed and working. The self-powered cam was helicoptered in the day before. Having previously “tested the hell out of the unit at McMurdo,” Mastroianni expected a smooth installation.
That procedure involved opening the unit’s solar panels, establishing connectivity to the main camp, packing the unit up again and having the pilot ferry it up to the hilltop. (The system weighs about 700 pounds mostly attributable to the batteries.) From there, Mastroianni was to radio back to camp to confirm the camera had been networked.
At least, that was the plan…
[...] Related DailyWireless articles include; Winter Solstice, Antartica Adventure and Polar Flight Telemetry. [...]
Left by dailywireless.org » Antartic Communications on January 5th, 2007