Barrow, Alaska

We're Off!

2005-04-16T07:21:00.000-05:00

Today we are leaving Barrow. Our plane leaves in about 3 hours. We are all packed and ready to go, and we somehow have more cargo to send home than we brought up here.

We will miss all of the new friends that we have made here in Barrow; the BASC crew, the other researchers that we have met along the way, and other random people that we have run into for various reasons. We have talked alot about the things that we really miss from home (chicken wings, indian food and beer, for starters), but there are also many things that we will miss here in Barrow (the quiet, no traffic, it's not hot, snowmachines, and the people seem so real).

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we have had an amazing experience here, one that I will certainly never forget, and if I ever get the chance to return to Barrow I plan to take it!

I will still be posting occasionally after I get home, especially once Phil gets his film developed and we see what photos he got that I wasn't around for. However, I do intend to take a couple of weeks of vacation when I get back, while waiting for the cargo to arrive.

Thank you so much for reading the blog, and sharing some of the experiences we have had here.

Aubrey

POLAR BEAR!

2005-04-13T23:14:00.000-05:00

We have been flying the balloon quite frequently over the last two weeks or so (almost every other day), and on Friday we flew our last flight and deflated the balloon in order to ship it back to Indiana. Unfortunately, the camera was a little too cold to operate very well during that process, as there were people rolling on the folded balloon, trying to push the remainder of the helium out of it. It was really quite amusing to watch!

I made a small box to house our digital camera that we hung under the balloon, and I got some aerial photos. Eventually the battery would get too cold and the camera would stop taking photos, but if you click on the link below there are a few shots from the balloons perspective.

Saturday was our last day of collecting data at the KBRW shed. We finished moving out of the shed yesterday, and all of our cargo is now piled up in the theatre.

Today I was working on packing some things here at BASC when we heard that there was a polar bear out near the runway. We got the camera and headed out there and got a few photos. Now that we have seen a polar bear we can truly say that our Barrow experience is complete!

CLICK HERE for the latest photos of the balloon and the polar bear.

Busy times in Barrow

2005-04-03T02:00:00.000-05:00

Well, things have been super busy here in Barrow the last couple of weeks. There have been many researchers here working on a project called LEADEX, and we have done 3 balloon flights to date (the fourth one will be tomorrow, weather permitting).

We have purchased our plane tickets to go home, and will be leaving Barrow on April 16. In the meantime we will be flying the balloon as often as possible, and working on getting the last important pieces of data from the instruments.

CLICK HERE for the latest pics of the balloon and LEADEX.

Picture time!

2005-03-11T23:32:00.000-05:00

I know, it must have been a big couple of weeks to have two posts from me on the same day! Things have been really crazy around here, between Dr. Shepson being here last week, and then my parents were here for 5 days. In between all of that we have been trying to get some work done! We are working on a couple of ideas of things to hang under the balloon so that we can get it up in the air and get some data from it, so I hope to have some photos of that soon.

CLICK HERE and enjoy the latest round of pics!

Alaskan librarians conference

2005-03-11T21:28:00.000-05:00

On Thursday (March 10, 2005), we were asked to address a group of librarians from all over the state of Alaska regarding our work here in Barrow. Adam put together a presentation in which he did a good job explaining some of the basics of the chemistry we are interested in studying, and why we chose to do this work in Barrow. I have decided to post a copy of the presentation and some of his notes here. Hopefully this will answer many of the questions that some of you have emailed to me in regards to some of those details. CLICK HERE to open a pdf of the presentation (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open this file, which you can download for free by CLICKING HERE).

New photos

2005-02-28T23:45:00.000-05:00

CLICK HERE for some new photos from Barrow. I know it's been 2 weeks since my last post, but things have been busy here, with very little time for photo opportunities. Dora Nelson, a high school teacher from North Carolina, has been here hanging out with us for the last couple of weeks, which has been fun. She left and Dr. Shepson arrived this weekend, so I'm sure that this week we will be busy updating Shep on what has gone on while he was gone. He leaves on Saturday morning, and my parents will be here Saturday evening for 5 days (it was kind of a Christmas present). After they leave, there is a large group of researchers coming into town to participate in a 2-3 week intensive study (LEADEX) out at a major lead (crack in ice where there is open water) on the ocean. We will be participants in LEADEX as well, so things will continue to be busy here in Barrow over the next month or so.

When I went to the shed on Thursday I discovered that a circuit board in my mass spectrometer has quit functioning. While I await the new parts to arrive I have been spending some time catching up on my sleep, and working on a few other small projects that had been put aside. As soon as the parts arrive I will be back at work on the autosampler, as I was really close to being at the point where I could start taking regular ambient samples. I will try to keep everyone posted as things progress here!

Balloon flight

2005-02-14T01:01:00.000-05:00

We flew the balloon for the first time in Barrow yesterday. This was mostly for our employees to get a chance to see what it is like when the balloon is out of the hangar, and for us to see what kind of things we need to change to make flying as easy as possible when it is -20C out there. We learned a lot, and got a few new photos as well. They can be seen by CLICKING HERE.

Not much else is new here. Still cold, and windy, and busy! I'll have more photos up as soon as something exciting happens!

Winter Wonderland?

2005-02-09T19:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I have not posted anything recently because there really has been nothing exciting to post! We have been trying to get in our first balloon flight all week, and have had winds in excess of 15 mph every day. In fact, yesterday evening they were reported to be 38 mph with gusts up to 43 mph. Definitely not ideal balloon flying weather. Right now we are keeping our fingers crossed to try for a flight midday Friday.

In town this last weekend was Kivgiq, which traditionally was known as the Feast of the Messengers. The history behind it is that back before phones and internet here on the North Slope, occasionally a village would invite the other villages to come and socialize with dancing, singing, feasting, and trading of goods. That village would send messengers on foot to the other villages, inviting them to come. Even though these days the message is not carried by foot, they still have the "race of the messengers" as one of the activities during Kivgiq weekend.

On Friday we went to the craft sale, held at the Native Heritage Center. We all bought some cool souvenirs for ourselves and others, all handmade by local Inupiats. Saturday evening we went to the high school gym to watch some of the traditional dancing. While we weren't able to understand the words, or much of the symbolism of the dancing, it was still pretty cool to watch.

Since we weren't able to fly Monday, Adam and I spent a good part of the day out at KBRW. Peter Lourie was in town doing some research for a book he is working on about Barrow and the Arctic Circle, so we spent part of the morning showing him what we are working on. I set my instrument up to do some automated work overnight, and we came back to NARL.

On Tuesday the wind was really blowing, and it was decided that it was not safe for us to go to the shed, either in the truck or on snowmachines. Adam and I hung out at NARL, catching up on sleed, laundry, and annoying Phil. We tried to take the truck out there this morning, but the drifts were totally impassable. We did make it out there on snowmachines this afternoon, after the wind had slowed down a little bit. CLICK HERE for photos of what we found when we got out there...

January 28, 2005

2005-01-29T02:29:00.000-05:00

Once again it has been an extremely busy week here in Barrow. Last Friday (the 21st) we inflated the balloon in the hangar (I didn't take any photos because we were really busy trying to get it done before all of our fingers froze). We have hired 10 locals to help us with balloon launches and recoveries, and that was the first time they ever got to see the balloon. We are hoping to get in a test flight sometime next week. This will mostly be for practice, and for our "employees" to get to see and experience what a monster the balloon can be when it is outside.

After the inflation we went to the local high school basketball game, and watched the Barrow Whalers stomp the Nome Nanooks 99-36. It was quite impressive! Basketball is huge here in Barrow, and the gym was packed.

Adam and I have been out to our building at the KBRW tower every day this week, working on getting inlets set up and trying to coerce our instruments to behave. Adam seems to be a little more persuasive than I am, but I'll get there soon.

Phil has been hard at work in his lab at NARL, also trying to be as persuasive as possible with his instrument. The road to the KBRW has been open this week, so Phil has also spent quite a bit of time driving Adam and I out there and back every day. I am sure that the next time it snows we will be back on the snowmachines in order to get out there.

Tomorrow we will begin our 2 days of firearms training, which will allow us to take the snowmachines to the KBRW tower without a trained escort. That will make things alot easier on everyone involved.

CLICK HERE for some photos of the hut out at the KBRW tower, and of Phil's lab at NARL.

Weather change...

2005-01-29T02:07:00.000-05:00

I replaced the AccuWeather box on the sidebar with the WeatherUnderground boxes that you see above. I have been watching AccuWeather, WeatherUnderground and Weather.com, and it seemed like AccuWeather was, shall we say, not so Accu-rate. Also, I liked that WeatherUnderground had a box that showed sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset information. I don't know how accurate that data is, but it gives you the general idea of what the daylight hours are like here.

Watch for a new post, soon to come, that I am working on that will have new pics!

Finally, another update (with photos)

2005-01-21T22:45:00.000-05:00

It has been a busy week since my last post. On the 12th we took all of Phils instrumentation to his lab, and we got most of the other equipment out the the KBRW tower building, which is where my autosampler/GC/MS and Adams GC/ECD/FID instruments will go. We had originally planned to take the instrumentation out there on sleds behind snowmachines (only the tourists call them snowmobiles up here), but we realized that was going to be too rough on some of the sensitive pieces. The former fire chief here in town, Tom Opi, has a Hagglunds track truck that he offered to use to haul our equipment. It is one of the only vehicles here in Barrow that is able to drive on the road at this point, due to the snow piled up. The Hagglunds are made in Sweden, and Tom bought this one from military surplus in Anchorage a few years ago (it's a 1990). It was a very cool ride, but extremely noisy! See the link below for photos.

Everything except the large liquid nitrogen dewers went on the Hagglunds, in three trips. The dewers were strapped to a couple of wooden sleds and hauled out there behind snowmachines.

On Thursday the 13th we got on the snowmachines and headed out to the tower to start unpacking equipment. It was a fairly uneventful trip, other than when I decided to fall off of the snowmachine. I wasn't hurt due to the many layers of clothing that I was wearing for warmth, so it really wasn't a big deal (just a little embarrasing). We made alot of progress at the tower with getting things out of crates and reassembled.

The rest of last week, and most of this week has just been spent getting the instrumentation unpacked and set up. This week everything at the tower got plugged in, and it all seems to be working pretty well. This weekend we will be doing calibrations and getting the autosampling capabilities up and running.

We have been riding the snowmachines out to the tower almost every day. We haven't had any more incidents of anyone falling off, but I did almost run into a caribou (they are all over the place out there)!

Today we inflated the balloon. We were all pretty busy (and pretty cold), so there are not a whole lot of photos. We will be back out there this weekend to check on the balloon, so I will take a couple of pics then.

CLICK HERE to get to the latest photographs.

Website Additions

2005-01-13T20:48:00.000-05:00

As I am sure everyone has noticed, I added the weather indicator on the right side of the page this evening. This way you can always see the temperature and weather conditions here in Barrow, and feel sorry for us!

Pictures are coming soon, I promise.

Finally in Barrow!

2005-01-11T22:20:00.000-05:00

Well, we are finally here in Barrow, AK. We arrived Sunday night and have been kept very busy since then, taking care of preparations to get our instrumentation to the various sites and set up. I will get some pics posted soon, but so far we have been out on snowmobiles, seen caribou, and spent alot of time sorting and assembling cargo as it arrives. I believe that everything is here now, so now it's just a matter of discovering what wasn't packed as well as it could have been, and what has decided that it's too cold to cooperate. The temperatures have been around -20 deg. F, but it has been pretty windy. It's not nearly as dark as I expected it to be; in the middle of the day they get twilight bright enough that you don't really need to use headlights on the trucks! In the morning and the evening, when the twilight is gone, the stars are pretty darn amazing.

As promised, I will try to get some pictures up soon (hopefully by this weekend).

Aubrey

Our first flights!

2004-11-19T14:15:00.000-05:00

We spent a good part of last week preparing and flying the balloon at Grissom Air Reserve Base, which is between Peru and Kokomo, IN (about 1 hour from Purdue). It went well, and it was a great learning experience for all of us as to how the balloon and winch behave in the real world. These will be the last flights before we leave for Barrow. Click here to veiw the photos - enjoy!

Freezer tests

2004-11-19T14:10:00.000-05:00

In October we did some cold temperature tests of the winch in a large freezer here at Purdue. Click here to see the photos.

Logistical planning trip to Barrow

2004-10-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

September 19-23 I actually got to make my first trip up to Barrow. It was very exciting, and very productive! I think that this upcoming field study is going to be a huge success, mostly due to the massive amount of support that is available to us in Barrow. Please click here to see photos from this trip.

2004-08-16T11:40:00.000-05:00

ALL of the photos that were taken by the Shepson group of the balloon inflation on Saturday can be found here:

http://www.chem.purdue.edu/shepson/Balloon-Aug04/index.htm

Anyone else that has photos from Saturday (Bob, Chris, Mike, etc.), please let me know where they can be seen or send them to me and I'll post them on our site.

Thanks!
Aubrey

2004-08-15T11:49:00.001-05:00

Here we are tying up all of the lines after deflating the balloon. We have rolled it back up and it will get stored in the lab until we get to do some test flights with it (hopefully October or November).

2004-08-15T11:49:00.000-05:00

This is winch that Chris and Randy have been working on for the balloon. This is just the motor and the drum for it; the rest will come later.

2004-08-15T11:48:00.000-05:00

Here is the whole crew we had today. From left to right: Chris Doerge (Amy Facility), Bob Bulger (BASC), Karl Garman, Mike Greco (Aerostar), myself, Phil Tackett, Paul Shepson, Levi Mielke, Bob Santini (Amy Facility), and Randy Replogle (Amy Facility)

2004-08-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

This is the underside of the balloon. In this shot you can see the dilation panel running most of the length of the belly of the balloon.

2004-08-15T11:42:00.000-05:00

The balloon is totally inflated, and we let the winch out some to see what it would do.

2004-08-15T11:41:00.000-05:00

Phil takes a turn filling the front end of the balloon.

2004-08-15T11:40:00.000-05:00

I am starting to fill the balloon!

2004-08-15T11:39:00.000-05:00

Mike is explaining to myself, Phil and Shep (my advisor) how to unroll the balloon

Initial balloon inflation

2004-08-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

The balloon that I mentioned in my Introduction is 43 ft. long, 14 ft. diameter, with fins that are 19 ft. tall. The total volume of the balloon is 4500 cubic feet (that's about 18-20 large cylinders of helium).

Yesterday we inflated the balloon for the first time! We did this in Lambert Fieldhouse on campus, in order to not have the variable of weather. It went really well! We learned a lot of new things from Mike (the engineer from Aerostar, the company that made the balloon), and made a new friend in Bob (one of the guys that works at BASC, the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium).

Thanks to everyone that came out yesterday and helped; it was greatly appreciated. Please see the accompanying photos that Levi took yesterday!

Introduction

2004-08-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

Hello! I'm glad that you have decided to visit my web journal. Here I will be documenting my upcoming trip(s) to Barrow, AK. This will include all of the preparation for the upcoming field study in January, and photos and news during the time that we are up there.

I have two projects that will be going to Barrow. The first involves taking up an autosampling instrument, fondly referred to as "the Beast". This instrument will be set up in a shed in a clean-air sector outside of Barrow, and will be collecting air samples from outside above the snowpack. Some of the chemical compounds that we are intested in from that air will be extracted, and then analyzed to see what is out there, and how much of it is present. The instrument can collect one sample per hour, and (hopefully) it will be able to do this all by itself, 24 hours a day, once I get it set up and running.

My other project involves flying a tethered balloon at an abandoned runway outside of Barrow. We are in the process of building a sampler that will hang under the balloon, and, in a similar way to the Beast, will collect air samples and extract some compounds of interest out of them using adsorbent tubes. We will collect these samples at various altitudes using the balloon, and then when it comes down Phil will be analyzing the tubes to determine what compounds are out there, and how abundant they are.

I hope to keep this journal updated as frequently as I can with news and photos. Please check back regularly for new updates, and feel free to leave me comments about anything that is on here.

Thanks!
Aubrey