Hello, everyone! Sundays are always a treat. You can sleep in a bit longer (at least some of us can …), and there’s not so much work to do (schedule permitting …), so you can just ease into the day and take care of the things you never get around to, and which are better done in peace and quiet … [Read more...]
Hello, everyone! The Polar Night is growing darker, subjectively speaking we have about two and a half hours of twilight at midday, although our instruments claim we have partial light for nearly four hours. So there’s a slight disconnect between what we see and the hard data … When there’s no … [Read more...]
Hello, everyone! Today I was rudely awakened as usual by my alarm clock, raised the blinds in my window and saw a strip of red on the horizon. Now you’re probably asking yourself what was so special about that. Well, for the past nine days we’d had snowstorms with wind speeds up to 60 knots, when … [Read more...]
Hello again, everyone! In the meantime, I’ve cobbled together some new bracing struts for our PowerKite, and treated it to a test flight on a day with pleasant weather but unfortunately very little wind (wind speed: 6 knots, temperature: minus 20 degrees). And it paid me back with an … [Read more...]
Hello, everyone! It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m taking a break. The weather isn’t exactly inviting: the wind has picked up to 50 kilometres per hour, with light snowfall and drifting. I had actually planned to send up the station’s PowerKite, which I’d done maintenance on the day before, again. … [Read more...]
Hello, everyone! In times when you might think there’s nothing but bad news, we wanted to tell you about a great idea that put a smile on the faces of all nine of us. Children at the Protestant day-care centre Zwergenland in the town of Girkhausen (North Rhine-Westphalia) made a lovely model of … [Read more...]
First of all, thanks so much for the flood of responses to our blog. I frequently deliberated whether or not I should continue the current talk about the coronavirus (which has also reached us in the form of news headlines on websites, and personal reports) in the blog. After all, we’re currently … [Read more...]
Hello, everyone! The flag’s been taken down on the airfield and the station has once again been prepared for the approaching severe-weather front. All the vehicles – except for two caterpillar trucks, just in case we need them – have been returned to the garage below the station, the massive … [Read more...]
Hello, everyone! … So here it is, our first entry in the AtkaXpress blog. As I’m writing, there are currently 17 of us here at the Neumayer III station, a multinational community. It includes 8 Canadians with their two beautiful old Basler aeroplanes (two somewhat elderly “ladies” by the names of … [Read more...]
One of the projects at Neumayer that continues virtually year-round consists in measuring the thickness of the sea ice at regular intervals. This layer of ice forms on the open water in the autumn and remains frozen throughout the winter. Only in summer does the ice cover completely or partly … [Read more...]
