Yesterday we participated in the inauguration of the station, together with different VIPs such as our Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem and Minister of Scientific Policy Sabine Laruelle. Schneider Electric was represented bu Gilles Vermot-Desroches, Senior VP Sustainable Development.

Sabine laruelle, Pieter De Crem and Alain Hubert                           

Gilles Vermot-Desroches (left)  

Unfortunately, Prince Philip couldn’t be here, but the delegation brought a movie in which he and his daughter (who the station is named after) passed a personal message. Princess Elisabeth also made a collage that was presented to us.

 

Most of the VIPs wanted to experience the real Antarctica and decided to stay in a tent for the night instead of sleeping in a room in the station. In the meantime, it’s already minus 20°C in the tents at night. From mid February on, the temperatures are falling spectacularly. Johan Berte, who comes here regularly, told us he experienced minus 30°C at the end of february.

After the inauguration we had a chance to meet the different VIPs, most of them CEOs of partner companies like Umicore, CMB, Prefalus etc. Jean bumped into an old schoolmate, the CEO of Prefalux.

Dries Lemmens (Laborelec), Wim Van Belle, Pieter De Crem, Rafaël Jahn (Laborelec)

Everybody worked day and night to get everything ready for the inauguration. Jean and I were no exceptions. Some days we worked untill 3 pm and the results are pretty nice. Lighting and sockets are ready to use with the Power Demand System that keeps production and usage of the energy in balance at all times.  

 

The water distribution system and parts of the ventilation are operational. This week we will be starting with the process tests for different applications such as water treatment.

Everybody was very excited to witness how our supervision system displays all the information from the different applications (temperature, alarms, pressure, etc) and that it is possible to operate the application from the supervision system. The system also offers a global overview of what is on offer in the station: ventilation, solar boiler, water treatment, a system to melt snow etc.

On our day off on Sundays, we explore the surroundings. Last time we visited what they call the “wind scoop”: a great heap of snow, tens of meters in height, piled up by the wind. The result is a crevice between the snow and mountain where you can walk through. The incidence of the light, creating a greenish blue glow, is unbelievably beautiful.

Today is February the 2^nd, 11 pm and It’s minus 15° in my tent. We have been here for three days now, but time is passing quickly. There are some 50 persons living in the basecamp, making it kind of overcrowded. In order for the kitchen crew to cope with this amount of people, lunch and dinner takes place in shifts. We certainly can’t complain about what they’re dishing us up, taking into consideration the limited resources.

Besides the technical crews like us, the camp is mainly inhabited by scientists doing research on climatic change, life on Antarctica on land and in the water, etc. Going for a walk with these people, who can name every animal and every rock, is a real educational treat…
















My tent                                                                              Art project                              

We also witnessed the first flight on Antarctica with an Ultralight aircraft. As part of an art project, six big tarpaulins with pictures of the six continents were spread out over the seventh continent and photographed from the air.

We're working at least 12 hours a day to guarantee the success of the project and there’s a lot of solidarity amongst the team members. We live in a kind of micro cosmos where every individual has a well-defined reason of being. Despite all the work that still has to be done, it’s impressive to see what has been achieved to date.

At the moment we’re starting up the 8 PLC panels with 1500 inputs / outputs by realizing the connections and communicational aspects. We’re doing everything by ourselves: wiring, connecting, testing, measuring, etc.

The wiring of the station is almost finished. We will quickly try to finish it with a competent team, in order to be able to proceed with the testing of the technical installations (diesel units, water treatment, solar heating system, HVAC, power management, etc.), the job we originally came for. Mid-February, the building will be inaugurated, we hope we will have advanced considerably by then.

Jean                                                          Wim





                                                 

As a result of the delay due to bad weather conditions we only left Cape Town the 28^th. At 10 am we took off for the Norwegian NOVO station in northern Antarctica.

 












The plane to Antarctica: an Ilyushin 76TD with Russian crew. There were 10 rows with 6 seats in the airplane. Depending on the cargo, rows of seats can be added or removed. We had to bring our Antarctic clothing outfit and stock it in the back of the plane, next to the portable toilets that you can see on the picture.

 

A look at the plane’s cockpit. The pilot used to be a well-known Russian test pilot. A good thing, considering the extreme landing conditions. The plane is equipped with ordinary wheels but has to land on a runway of ice. The pilot simultaneously uses the motors to brake, which is quite a tricky performance. We arrived after a 5 hours and 35 minutes flight. The time zone in Cape Town is GMT+2, at NOVO we’re back on GMT. Local time of arrival was 1:35 pm.

The weather was fine (visibility of 1.200 m, 3 °C, wind speeds of 35 km/h). The transfer to Utsteinen was planned for the same day.

Our team helped unload the cargo for the BELARE expedition. This wasn’t an easy job: we had to handle the fragile machinery and weighty containers with the equipment for the laboratory, the PLC’s and the heavy spare parts for the Prinoth tractors, which had to be lifted by six persons in order to put them on the sledges. The equipment was then transported to the Bassler plane by Ski-Doo.

We were rapidly confronted with the unpredictable weather on Antarctica. Everything looked peachy keen but quickly storms, bad visibility and snow on the runway in Utsteinen were forecasted. As a result we were stuck on the NOVO basis until the 30^th. At night, our team stayed in tents 11 and 12.

Together with 6 other persons, Jean and me resided in tent number 12. It wasn’t very spacious with all our luggage and the fragile material we had to stock in the front of the tent.

The station is operated by a Russian crew. We were lucky to have a Russian speaking expeditionary in our team. Together with the Russians, we took a Prinoth tractor to a nearby mountain range. On top of the world!

In the distance we could spot a lake. The scientist in our team explained that this is the result of local micro-climate. Unfortunately we couldn’t go take a closer look due to the risk of falling into crevasses.

 

In the afternoon, the weather drastically changed. Heavy winds were rising.













As best as we could, we prepared as much as possible for our mission while waiting for our flight to Utsteinen. In the living room-tent we could plug in our computers and work at a table.