Sunvisors

First time an Airbus A330 lands in Antarctica

First time for an Airbus, not the first time for an airliner.

Cape Town to Wolf's Fang

Iceberg

Map showing the trajectory of iceberg A23a, the largest iceberg in world, from 1986 to its breaking up at the end of August 2025 north of South Georgia island.
Click to embiggenate

Back in December 2024, which is 38 years after it broke off of Antarctica, it covered 1,400 square miles. Now it's only half that size and they aren't expecting it to last much longer.

Has anyone been there? Google knows:

When the iceberg calved from Antarctica's Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986, it broke off with a Soviet research station, Druzhnaya 1, still on it. 

PHYS ORG has the story.

Via daily timewaster

Midwinter Flight to Antarctica

A Royal New Zealand Air Force C-130 Hercules on the ice runway at McMurdo Station during a midwinter medical evacuation from Antarctica. (Credit: NZ Air Force)

New Zealand Air Force rescues US researchers from Antarctica amid extreme cold, darkness by Chris Williams

Middle of winter, pitch black, no alternate landing strips. Should be a piece of cake, right? I mean, we've got all the latest technology, all the right gear, plenty of experience, it should be no problem. Well, if you are confident and not afeered of the dark, or the cold, you'll probably be fine. Who am I kidding? Risky as fuck. You'd need some stones to sign up for this.

McMurdo Station

Hercules C-130 originiated in the mid 1950s.

Cold enough for you?

Why is the Arctic Asymmetric? | Why Trees Grow at the Same Latitude as Ice Sheets
Casual Earth

If you ever wondered why some places are covered with ice and places that seem to have similar characteristics don't, this video is for you. I think I probably wondered about it once, but I likely got an answer like 'oh, I don't think anybody knows, that's just the way it is'. Realizing my scrawny little self wasn't going to personally be able to map the weather of the entire arctic, I forgot about looking for an explanation. Come to think of it, I haven't run into anything about arctic weather that wasn't designed for three year olds. Yes, I know we (that's a royal 'we') keep trying to educate the ignorant, but you know, there are some people out here with brains. There is the problem of how much work is expended on explanations. The amount of effort and information in this one video is probably enough to produce a zillion videos aimed at three year olds.

Budget Airline Flight to Antarctica

Czech airline Smartwings' 737 Max at Troll Airfield, Antarctica

Airlinerwatch reports:

The flight was chartered by Aircontact to carry the members of the Norwegian Polar Institute to their base. The Troll Research Station located 235 kilometers from the coast in the eastern part of Princess Martha Coast, in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica.

They flew from Cape Town, South Africa:

Cape Town to Troll Airfield

The runway at Troll Airfield is two miles long. It seems to be a busy place, for being at the end of Earth.

Via FlightAware

De Havilland Canada Twin Otter on Skis

De Havilland Canada Twin Otter taking off from Fossil Bluff Skiway

Fossil Bluff is a refueling stop for Twin Otters flying from Rothera Research Station to I don't know where. Antarctica is huge. Matthew Phillips has some cool photos from his visit there.

Fossil Bluff Antarctica

Update May 2021 added map showing location.

Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian

I finished re-reading Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian. During an ill-fated cruise to Australia, Jack runs afoul of a Dutch man-of-war, much larger than he is, who sets after him. Discretion being the better part of valor, Jack flees south into an Antarctic storm. Think The Perfect Storm and you have a pretty good idea of the conditions. When a lucky shot of Jack's takes out the Dutchman's foremast, the Dutch ship slews sideways, is capsized by a giant wave and is lost. Boom. Just like that.

I'm thinking that is a hell of an event. Something like that would be a capital subject for a painting, so I go looking for one. 

Loss of HMS Blenheim and HMS Java in a hurricane - Thomas Buttersworth

I didn't find much. Two large British warships, the HMS Blenheim and the HMS Java were lost in a hurricane in the Southern Indian Ocean in 1807. This is closest event I could find to the fictional one in the book. It takes place in the same part of the world, the two ships are of similar size to the ones in the story, and a hurricane sounds similar to the conditions our heroes encounter.

We have one painting of the event (above), but I don't think it portrays the situation very well. I suspect that not many first class painters experienced a hurricane on board a ship.

This scene from Black Sails does a better job.

into the storm | Black Sails 3.01-3.02 storm tribute
alameli
After surviving the storm and an encounter with an iceberg, our heroes wind up on Desolation Island where they rest, recover and repair their ship.

Dutch whalers near Spitsbergen - Abraham_Storck, 1690

An American whaler stops by and lends them some assistance. Though this painting is of a place on the other side of the world, I think it gives us a good picture of the situation. Except for the whale. There is no whale in the harbor at Desolation Island.

Kharkovchanka

"Kharkovchanka" - The Colossal Soviet Antarctic Cruisers
Some people like to make things, some people like to talk, some people like to play in the sand. Doesn't really seem to matter whether they live in a totalitarian dictatorship or the land of the free wage slaves. The more I think about it, the more impressed I am by what the Soviets managed to accomplish. For the USA, they were the only power on Earth that was even worth worrying about. They managed to maintain arms parity for 40 years, until their whole house of cards collapsed. Their engineers and mechanics were carried on the backs of the proletariat, something like we do here, just the Soviets didn't care whether they ground the peasants into the ground. We at least pretend to care.

Pic of the Day

D/S Guvernøren (sunken wreck) and the Bark Europa (afloat) in Antarctica

In 1915, at the end of a successfully whaling season and holding 16,000 gallons of whale oil, the Guvernøren caught fire and burned. It is a popular scuba diving spot.

There seems to have been more than one ship with the name Guvernøren. Another one was involved in a collision which led to the Halifax explosion. It survived but was later wrecked in the Falkland Islands.

Another shipwreck in Antarctica with a map.

Via daily timewaster

Pic of the Day

Wreck of the Mar Sem Fim

The Mar Sem Fim sank in Antarctica back in 2012. It has since been raised. Amusing Planet has the story.


Map showing location of wreck (Orange) and some research stations (Blue)
The wreck happened in the South Shetland Islands.

Via Traditional Vibe

Bouvet Eiland

One wheel landing of a SA Air force Oryx
Photo by Tom van der Meulen, taken while "Lying on my stomach, hanging upside down out the door".

This photo showed up in the Flight Aware newsletter. At first I thought someone had overshot the runway and ended up hanging over the creek. Then I read the caption and realized this was a helicopter, and it's not really a landing, he's just touching down on this rock.

Oryx Helicopter off Cape Town, South Africa

I found this picture of the Oryx Helicopter on the South African Air Force 22 Squadron's website, where I also found this bit:

• First helicopter landing on Bouvet Eiland in 1966.

What is a 'Bouvet Eiland'? Is this some kind of ship? No, it's an island, way off in the middle of the south, south Atlantic.

Bouvet Island

As you might expect, it's not much of a place, small and covered with ice.

Bouvet Island, southeast side, as seen at sunrise, eight miles distant. Black and white photograph coloured by hand. Photo taken on the German Valdivia expedition. 1898.

It's really remote:

• 54.43 degrees South, 3.38 degrees West
• 1,100 miles from the coast of Antarctica
• 1,700 miles from Cape Town, South Africa
• 2,600 miles from the southern tip of South America
• 3,200 miles from Buenos Aires

Since most helicopters have only a short range, I think the helicopter that made the landing probably made most of the journey from South Africa carried on board a ship. The helicopter landing on Bouvet Eiland wasn't made with an Oryx. The landing occurred in 1966, the Oryx didn't fly until 20 years later.

Update December 2021 found a related video on YouTube: Why is Bouvet Island a Part of Norway?

Colombia goes to Antarctica

Colombia sends an expedition to the Antarctic. Penguins protest.

More pictures here.

Tractor Girl

Dutch actress and adventurer Manon Ossevoort driving her tractor across Africa

A young woman from Holland has driven a tractor to the South Pole. She just arrived there this last week. It took her a few weeks or a few years, depending on where you want to start counting.
    She started out many moons ago on a 34 year old farm tractor which she may have driven across Europe and Africa. Or maybe the North Atlantic. The story seems to be more about story telling and dreams than about what actually happened. Maybe you need to read the book. Anyway, Iceland seems to be the last place she was before Johannesburg.

Massey Ferguson 35. Most of the ones on the net have red hoods. Ours was gray, though a bit more faded than this one.

     I was impressed with the age of this tractor, although I probably shouldn't have been. We had two old tractors on the farm (Highwater Orchard, the infamous). One was a compact Massey Ferguson which had an integrated hydraulic lift (also known as a 3 point hitch).

Not ours, but it could have been. Even the headlight is broken.

The other was an ancient Massey Harris 44 where you sat 6 feet off the ground. Old, old, old. At least that's how I remember it. Turns out it was probably no older than I was at the time, which was only about 15.

A little more reading and I find out that Manon started her expedition back in 2005 and got as far as Cape Town and then her luck ran out. Recently her luck improved and she resumed her journey, flying in a Russian cargo plane along with the shiny new tractor provided by Massey Ferguson , to Antarctica.

Once she got to Antarctica it only took her about three weeks to get to the South Pole. While she was pretty much on her own driving across Africa, for this leg of the trip there was a support crew with a couple of trucks. Good idea. I think you'd be pretty foolish to try this all by your lonesome. You might be wondering about driving tractors in Antarctica, but it seems that the first journey that crossed the whole continent used tractors, tractors very similar to the small one we had on the farm, so this trip was a return visit to former glory for the tractor company. All hail the mighty Massey Ferguson!


So now I'm reading about Antarctica and how it's all covered with snow and ice (well, duh), and how it's really thick. So how thick is it? A hundred feet? A couple of hundred feet? Thicker. Remember it's been snowing done there for billions of years and it NEVER melts. Are you ready for this? It's two MILES thick. If we had that much ice here Mt. Hood would be obliterated.

Laser measurement of elevation via Satellite. Vertical distance is exaggerated.

In some places the ice slopes down toward the edges of the continent. In other places there is an abrupt change in elevation. Notice the line of cliffs in the above image. I've only found one mention that climbing up on top of the ice caused any problem. If might be that the abrupt change of elevation occurs in a hundred miles instead of a thousand, so maybe it isn't a big problem.

Trying to put this story together was exceptionally difficult. It might be a gender thing. I thought the video of the cross Antarctic expedition was great. Direct, succinct and to the point. Everything about Tractor Girl was all touchy freely and scattered from here and gone. That's okay, she's done something very cool.

I'm wondering how much of my attraction to this story was because it was done by a woman. Men do crazy things all the time. I'm thinking it must be because there is something to the story. Top Gear is always doing something crazy, usually really stupid, but they manage to make an entertaining story out of it. I think the thing about this story is that Manon is really trying to make things better. Dreams ARE important.

Normally a story like this would be loaded with links, but today you are going to have to fend for yourselves. I've spent way too much time on this already.

P.S.#1 Re: the Massey Harris tractor. Back then I was just beginning my fascination with all things mechanical and the brakes on this tractor threw me for a loop. They were mounted in the side of the transmission, not even remotely close to the rear axle. The brake shoes were mounted to a panel that was bolted over a hole in the side of the transmission. Inside the hole was the brake drum. Weird, but if you consider the size and weight of the rear wheels (probably a ton, being as they were filled with antifreeze), it makes a certain amount of sense. Those wheels are probably the last thing you want to fool with, and we never did. Yes, I know I'm wondering a little, but man, I thought I was done with tractors, and yet here I am.

P.S.#2 Ever notice how there's an extra 'C' in antarctica? Does anyone ever say ant-ark-tik-uh? No, they don't, they say ant-ar-tik-uh. Or maybe that's just me pirate upbringing showing through. Arrrrggghhh!

Fun on Ice with the Giant Russian IL-76 Air Freighter

We are operating in Antarctica on an ice runway. Empty, this plane weighs about 100 tons. Loaded, it weighs about 200 tons. It seems to have 20 wheels, which means each wheel is carrying between 5 and 10 tons, which is like 5 times as much as each wheel on a large 18 wheeled semi-truck. This clip only shows 3 minutes out of the middle of the video. Click on the YouTube logo to watch the whole thing (16 minutes).

Antarctic Icebergs

My cousin John forwarded an email to me with bunch of pictures.

Icebergs

Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions. Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form. When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe. Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.

... Is this amazing??

Antarctica Frozen Wave Pixs - Nature is amazing!

In the next series of pictures the water froze the instant the wave broke through the ice. That's what it is like in Antarctica where it is the coldest weather in decades. Water freezes the instant it comes incontact with the air. The temperature of the water is already many degrees below freezing. Just look at how the waves froze in mid-air!!!

Having the Internet means that we get to see something that we never imagined! Pass it on for others to enjoy!

From: Candace

Update April 2021 Replace missing slideshow with image and link to Google Photos Album.