Sunday- some work with the UAV, and a field trip...

Today was Sunday, when the camp staff generally have a slow day or even a whole day off.  Routines are looser.  Since we are done with the GPS surveying, it's time to turn our attention to some of the other tasks we've brought with us.

One of them is the UAV- we're evaluating whether it will work up here at Summit- if so, we will use it to make a detailed topographic map of the camp and surrounding area; partly this will help out the camp management, who want to get a feel for how much snow (volume-wise) they will have to move away from buildings, but also there is a science goal- to learn about surface roughness, which is important for a number of reasons.

Here we are working on ground checks.  One of the aspects of operating a UAV is that there is a great deal of time spent fiddling with things on the ground and checking and re-checking them.  As it happened, there was a glitch in the altitude indicator, which prevented us from getting any flying in today.  This evening I updated the autopilot firmware, which fixed the glitch- so hopefully tomorrow will result in some flights.  There is still the altitude, so we are not certain to fly. 

The other thing we did today was to take a 'field trip' including some camp staff and other scientists, to a satellite camp about 10 km away, where investigators are drilling large ice cores to measure Carbon-14 in the ice. 

Here I'm driving the bus...

A good day all around, and looking forward to tomorrow!  Also, an aircraft update- there will be no flights tomorrow, as the C-130s in Kangerlussuaq are grounded.  They are flying some other planes from New York tomorrow, and that will hopefully allow us to fly out on schedule on Tuesday.