The team doctor and Vickers sleuth extraordinaire of the Mawson's Huts Foundation expedition was kind enough to reply over the weekend to my inquiries into the equipment he's using this year. -- Now how many people can say they've gotten email all the way from Antarctica?
Chris Henderson wrote:
This year the equipment used to search for the air tractor will be ground penetrating radar, two magnetometers (to use like a differential GPS), and a pulse induction magnetometer, as well as ice augers. The ice levels are lower than last year which will make location easier, and the surface of the ice has no irregularity (sastrugi), which makes using the equipment easier.
First we will use the magnetometer to locate any metal object in the search area (there is not likely to be much metal other than the airframe). The magnetometer will only work if the rocks are less magnetic than the airframe - we will have to investigate their properties. The airframe is 40mm x 1mm steel tube roughly 6m x 2m which is not a lot of steel mass, although it is large. The magnetometer is designed to augment the radar scans - in other words if something shows up, it is likely to be the airframe and we will know roughly where it is. The radar will pinpoint it. The ice augers will allow us to make a profile of the underlying rock which I think may be 5m deep. We will use them as a way of calibrating the radar.
Digging in the ice is difficult and time consuming; last year it took two days to dig a 3m x 3m x 1m trench. Time is precious here and the team has many other tasks to complete - so we will probably dig only one trench to find the airframe. Therefore it is important we establish the most likely position using surface techniques.
We only arrived the day before yesterday, and are presently unpacking and settling into the accommodation. We will not start the air tractor search until some other projects are complete, so I do not expect any results from the air tractor search for two weeks . There has been a low pressure system passing us, it is cloudy and the temperature is fairly warm - as I write this it is 7 am and the temperature is 3 degrees C.
Batteries do not work well in the cold - particularly laptop and camera batteries. Last year I had trouble with the batteries for the radar gear and the computer so I put all the equipment in a wheeled cart and ran it from an external 12v battery. This year I do not have the cart so we will have to keep spare batteries on hand. However, the area for the search has been narrowed down which will make the scans quicker.
regards
Chris
And, further to Dr. Chris' update, Dr. Tony Stewart wrote:
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Cheers