Risky South Pole mission: retrieve sick scientists from research station
smh.com.au
smh.com.au
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Otter
These planes are special things. If you want to go somewhere dangerous, or just weird, this is what you want carrying you.
At one point the company was the worlds biggest operator of Twin Otters. And the plane got a reputation for flying in horrible weather conditions.
I have a childhood memory of being on a ferry across it and being the only person interested in lunch.
At 3am when I should be sleeping. The internet is the invention of our lifetimes..its just amazing how just on the notion of sheer information - and education of us regular citizens, has totally been shaken. I recently read that libraries were first created with the purpose of letting even poor folk self-educate.
Makes one wonder if there should be an attempt at setting up a wiki for personal stories and such, as i doubt blog services have any dedication to preservation.
#nostalgia
http://www.markhorrell.com/blog/2011/the-lukla-flight-is-it-...
We slept during the day. Planned missions in the early evenings. Huddled around the fired pit, drinking coffee and looking the stars for a few hours each night before conducting missions in the middle of the night, in remote villages far off in the mountains, which would extend till morning.
It required helicopter operations flying low, between the mountains. Long offset infiltrations... we'd land a few km away from the objective, and walk our way, for a few hours at a time through mountains and valleys on our way to the target.
Being in this remote post was surprisingly an enjoyable part of that deployment (most of us were disappointed when told we'd be going here at the last minute)... The (relative) isolation from other units, cleared your mind and focus. We all enjoyed the camaraderie and time we had to just hand out with each other during down time. During off days / nights I got a lot of reading done, probably more than I've ever been able to in a short period since. The scenery and beauty of that country, and specifically that location is something I'll never forget.
I overwintered on Kerguelen island. The environment is not as extreme as on Amundsen-Scott, but from what I can see the isolation is almost exactly the same: same amount of personel in summer and winter, just a slightly shorter isolation in winter. On the other hand there's no runway and it's too far from inhabitated land for helicopters, so in case of a real emergency the best that can happen is that a ship can come to the base and get you to Réunion in ten days or so. Also, communications are much worse it seems, with a few tens of kB/s at most, shared with two other smaller French bases in the Indian ocean.
It was great, the best experience in my life so far. It felt like real adventure that doesn't really happen anymore in the civilised world. You have to be very patient, understanding and open though, because at least a few of your companions won't be. There was a sense of companionship I haven't felt elsewhere, as well as the possibility for people with vastly different backgrounds to meet, when they would probably never had met in "real life".
Honestly cars were not a problem for me since I had one of the few cars on Kerguelen: there is just one road, to go to the IT/electronics/geophysics lab.
What was strangest for me once back to civilisation was being able to just go wherever I want without asking or even notifying anyone, and even go there alone, after a year of strictly controlled movements and the obligation to go everywhere in groups of three :)
I guess most of it would go into crew selection and health screenings, but stuff still happens.
Kudos to the Washington Post tech team!
A random gmail worked.