[Rod_Filan]

Magnetometer survey of the air tractor search area.

Mawson's Huts Foundation Blog Archive Mawson’s Huts Sitrep Wednesday 23rd December 2009

One of the exciting events of the day was the first magnetometer survey for the air tractor. Magnetometers work on a different principle to metal detectors, measuring the local magnetic field. However this can vary substantially as the sun moves around the sky (or, as the earth moves around the sun, if you believe that sort of thing, thank you Copernicus). The best time of day is usually at night when the field varies only slightly. We checked this over the last 48 hours and found that 9 pm to 5 am is the optimal time to do the survey, so after dinner Tony, Chris, Michelle and Jody headed off to start work. Magnetometers are affected by many types of metal, so we carefully eliminated watches, GPS units, radios, boot chains, and in accordance with the manual, we checked for knives and pistols. Wearing rubber gumboots, Tony took nearly 500 readings on Jody’s carefully prepared grid over a few hours, hoping to find a signal indicating a metal object under the ice. And the results? That’s for another day…. suffice to say there are some areas of interest that will be checked with our metal detector and ice penetrating radar.

Jody and Drs Chris and Tony

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Cheers and Merry Christmas to the Mawson's Huts team