Air Travel in the Greater McMurdo Area

We have three airfields here in McMurdo. They include the Annual Ice Runway, Williams Field Skiway, and Pegasus White Ice Runway. Here is a map of the south end of Ross Island.



There are five points of interest that I will point out. And don’t forget to click on the map to get a larger view of it. The red dot is McMurdo station and the purple dot is Scott Base (the New Zealand base) which is over the hill from MacTown. The three lines show the three airfields. The yellow line is the Ice Runway, the green line is Willy Field, and the blue line is Pegasus. Also shown is a thin purple line goes west across McMurdo Sound, this is the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. All of the water that you see on this map is frozen sea ice currently. The edge of the open ocean water is near Cape Royds at this time. The Ross Ice Shelf is still over water, however it is a glacier and it is several hundred feet thick. As compared to the sea ice which is between 6 and 28 feet thick. So, as you can see the Ice Runway is on sea ice and the other two fields are on the ice shelf.

So why do we have three airfields??? Let me give you a description of each airfield first.

The Annual Ice Runway is built during WINFLY and is used from October to December each year. It is built right on the sea ice surface and it is a groomed ice surface. It is 10,000 feet long and 1000 feet wide. The runway is only a mile from town and so it is very convenient to get to for maintenance crews, cargo crews, and for passengers. The downside of the runway is that it is on top of the ocean and ice melts when it gets warm. The ice is actually blue in color and so it actually melts quicker that ice with a coating of white snow on top of it. So the 24 hours a day of sunlight is starting to take a toll on the surface. Survey crews are checking the condition of the ice constantly. They are checking the depth of the ice, the temperature of the ice, and the consistency of the ice. To give you some perspective on how strong the sea ice is, a loaded C-17 plane that lands at McMurdo weighs 485,000 pounds. All of the planes that come here can land on this surface both wheeled and ski equipped. This runway is scheduled to close this Friday. If you want to land on the Ice Runway you better get your tickets ASAP.

The next airfield is Willy Field Skiway. This field is named after Navy Seabee Richard Thomas Williams who drown after his tractor broke through the sea ice in 1956. Willy Field is a snow skiway that is built on 25 feet of compacted snow which sits on 260 feet of ice. It is used by the ski equipped C-130’s from New York and the Twin Otters which also have skis. It is seven miles from Willy to MacTown most of which is on a snow road across the ice shelf. This is the only field with a crosswind runway for use in different wind directions.

And the last airfield is Pegasus White Ice Runway. Pegasus is named for a plane that crashed on the ice shelf. The plane is still on the ice shelf and there are tours out to the crash site from town from time to time. Pegasus is used for wheeled flight operations during WINFLY and after the Ice Runway is closed. It is 18 miles from town and it is connected to Willy Field with a snow road. This runway is an evolution of ice runway construction techniques. It was first built about 10 years ago and it was built similar to the Ice Runway. All of the snow was removed from the strip and the remaining blue ice was groomed for a runway. The problem with this is the fact that blue ice absorbs the heat of the sun faster than the white snow. This isn’t going to melt out the runway since the glacier is 110 feet thick at this point, but it would case melt pools on the runway and maintenance issues. At some point in time they decided to use the large snowblasts to blow a covering of snow back onto the runway when it was not in use to keep the sun from melting the ice. And when the next flight was planned to come in they would blow the snow back off. Well then this evolved into keeping the snow on the ice and compacting it with several 185,000 pound compactors. This made a two inch thick white ice surface for the runway. Here we have the best of worlds, a surface strong enough to land a loaded C-17 on it and a white surface to keep the maintenance to a minimum.

So that is a little bit about the airfields here in town. As I said the Ice Runway will close on Friday. And the entire Ice Town will be moved to either Willy or Pegasus and they will both be up and running on Monday. A very large task for one weekend. One other interesting change for this year was that all three airfields had their navigational systems up and running at the same time this October so that all three could get FAA certified at one time instead of as the airfields open. This was a pretty major feat for all involved.

Here is a photo take from the top of Ob Hill this past Sunday. Ob Hill is the 750’ peak right between McMurdo and Scott Base. I will try to give you an idea of the layout of the Ice Runway.



You can easily see the edge of McMurdo on the right and the mountains across the sound in the distance. And you can see 4 C-130’s sitting on the ramp. The next photo gives you some of the layout of Ice Town and the surroundings.



The blue area is the taxiway, cargo loading area, fueling pits, and plane parking area. The purple area is Ice Town. There is all of the building required for the NYANG to maintain their fleet as well as cargo housing, generators, flight tower, fire house and other buildings. The green area in the foreground is snowmobile parking. There is up to 100 snowmobiles parked there at one time. And off to the right in yellow is the Discovery Hut that Scott built in 1901.



This photo is a layout of some other important areas of the Ice Runway. The pink line is the roadway from the ice/land transition to Ice Town. The area close to the land near the snowmobiles is exciting this time of year. The snow is soft and it is easy to get stuck and you cross over several open cracks in the ice along the shore. The green line is the road north to Cape Evans. If you look closely you can see two dots on the road, they are Pisten Bullies headed out to explode hydraulic lines for us to fix. The blue line is the runway. The planes go from right to left as they land and as they takeoff. The two little dots at the right end are a 220kW generator and the navigational aid building that the generator powers. And the yellow line is the fuel line for the airfield. They lay a 6 inch fuel hose out to the fuel pits to re-supply the aircraft. This line is impressive at a mile long, but Gary has laid more LDH than that before. They also lay a fuel line to Willy Field. How about a 6 mile LDH run, that is very impressive. The fuel for Pegasus is tankered out from Willy Field.

R.J.

PS have fun in CA!

How to tax your AAA card.

Since the Delta has been a common them lately, I thought I would share some photos from the shop. And someone at F-P show this to Mike Ventre, it is amazing how F-P life imitates real life some time. Mike, tell me this rim doesn’t look just like the Big Trouble rim that we did!!!!





Yes that is the rim from a Delta on its side. A little wider than the diameter. Issac is modeling it for us. He has the fun job of painting the rim before having a tire installed. The joys of being a General Assistant in the Heavy Shop never end.



And here is Shane our other Pinhead, I mean our other GA modeling with the rim. He did lend me his camera to take these photos so I do need to include him.

And how do you carry a tire to fit this rim? Well if you have one then you use a CAT 966G loader. This is Holly from parts modeling in this photo for us.



And here is the finished product.



And then in the background is a CAT D9N up on jack stands. Not something that most of us see everyday. I don’t have any idea what it weighs but it is allot.







This is one of our dirt dozers. We have two large dirt dozers. A D9N and a D7 and there are two D8R for snow moving. There are many small differences between the dirt and snow dozers. One of which is the track design. The snow dozers are wider also know as LGP (Low Ground Pressure) and the cleats are not as aggressive as the dirt counterparts. The main use for this dozer is to push up earth to use as fines and fill in town. Fill is just that, fill for holes and washout from snow runoff. And fines are the equivalent to sand that we use to make ice less slippery. It also works well to help melt ice. The heat from the sun does not heat up ice very well because most of the energy is reflected back off of the ice. Well the dark color of the fines will absorb heat quickly and melt off the ice quickly on a nice day. The reason this dozer is in the shop is to replace the track pads because the old ones are worn out. The bearing surface of the pads are well within spec, but the cleats are worn way down.





You can see the difference between the new and the old. The new is about 3” tall and the old is an inch or less. These pads have been on the machine for about 3 years. That is how abrasive the volcanic rock is around here. There are 52 pads on each side at a weight of 84 lbs. each. That is about 8800 lbs of pads alone. Each pad has four bolts that are torqued to 460 foot pounds and then tightened another 120 degrees. Two mechanics can install about 15 pads in a work shift and we have two shifts working on them.

Well this post makes me feel better. We were getting too much wildlife on the blog before.

Enjoy.
R.J.

Driving SW#4 is like going to 1st grade.

Wednesday night Paula and were able to lead a Delta trip together to Cape Evans. Hopefully you all remember what a Delta is by now. It is a homely 4WD vehicle that is a second cousin to the Ward la France Ambassador. Well come to find out it is also a second cousin to SW #4. Just because it is 4WD doesn’t mean that is capable of going off a paved road. (It was a very long way to go Mike, but yes I did just say that Engine 51 is related to SW4. Your turn!)





Oh yes, back to the trip. This trip is the second last recreation trip to Cape Evans for the season. And I will give a report of the Hut there some time soon, it is an amazing sight. One of the reasons that the trips will be ending is because the sea ice is changing and more importantly the snow on top of it is changing. The snow and the ice is getting warmer and so the snow is becoming soft and compressible. This is not a good thing when driving a 33,000 pound truck with 44 inch wide tires. So we had a good trip out to the Cape and the second Delta that was behind us got stuck in the snow 3 times. What happens is the first trip over the snow is fine, but the weight of the truck breaks up the solid snow on top and the next vehicle to pass sinks to the sea ice. And right now that is about 12 inches down.

Well I only got one chance to drive the Delta that evening and so I wanted to make it memorable. The second Delta was stuck about 1 mile from the Cape and our group was finished in the Hut. So we decided that I drive out to the other group and bring them to the Hut while Paula stayed behind with our group and the second Delta crew would shovel themselves out. So I got out to them and loaded the 15 passengers in the truck and started to back the 1 mile back to hut. This way I would not have to turn around and get off of the road. Well I did fine until I decided to back into a side road and then head to the hut forward. When I pulled forward towards the hut my rear wheels fell off of the packed road and I was stuck there. Very shortly after this the second Delta caught up to me and we unloaded the passengers and loaded them back onto their original ride. Fun!!!

And here is the ‘Hero’ shot. Me and my machine.



And this is the aftermath.



The amazing thing about these Deltas is that they are easy to dig out by hand. Much unlike SW4 and E51 if I might add. With three people shoveling for about 10 minutes we had the truck up and out of the hole. The tires are so wide that they act as snowplows and any lose snow in front of them will stop you in no time. And so all that is needed is a clear path from the rear tires to the front tires and a gently ramp going up in front of the front tires. I was amazed when we drove out. FYI I did help shovel.



To give you some idea of the hole, the rear stairs are usually about 15” off of the ground when they are folded down. As you can start to see in the last photo they are quite as designed. And the helper with the shovel is Kyle, a fellow NY’er. He is here with the 109th Air National Guard. He is a rigger that packs parachutes for all of the cargo that they drop out of C-130’s over science camps in the deep field.

Well we then made it successfully back home to MacTown with only two other instances of getting stuck in the snow. These two times Paula was the driver and as any good Fire Chief would, she didn’t let anyone out of the truck with a camera. No proof here! After all of the fun we made it home only a half hour later than we normally do. So it was a fun trip for all. And we did not see any Penguins but we did pass a seal.









Enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving weekend. We will be having our Thanksgiving meal on Saturday at 5 which is Friday at 11pm for you people in the East. And we also get a two day weekend, another good thing,

Take care.
R.J.

Some C-130 Photos for Bill.

Opps, Sorry Bill there are Penguins in your airplane shots. These guys invaded "Ice Town" last week. And as always, when you hear that something newsworthy has happened, you check the public drive and there is always photos of it. So, as usual I stole these from someone who doesn't build transmissions for a living.

That is all. Enjoy.
R.J.

And now for the half time show. "At least they have a good band."

Well it is now three months down and three months to go. And much to Jim's dismay it will only be three more months. Actually there has been allot of talk and rumors here in town about next winter. Raytheon is projecting a several million dollar shortfall for next years budget, and so they have submitted a winter season plan for McMurdo that only has enough people to keep the town open. To give you an idea, last winter in MacTown there was about 230 people on station and this coming winter plan is around 90. So allot of people that come down every year will be out a job and so there is a ton of discussion about this subject around town. I suspect that the final numbers will fall somewhere between last years and the proposal, but it leaves allot of people uncertain for now. I have even hear a rumor about keeping the station open for another month at the end of the season, kind of like WINFLY at the end of the year. This would get some of the winter work done before the winter season. But that rumor isn't very strong right now.

So after three months here I am getting used to the place. Some things are very different from the states. One example is that nothing, or almost nothing is locked here. You can walk into almost any building at any time day or night. And may people never lock there dorm rooms. I have a large Snap-On tool box assigned to me at work. The type you would see in any dealership in the states. It is likely worth $5000 with the tools inside. For the first few weeks I would lock it at night, then I realized that it was just a pain to lock and unlock it everyday. Everyone has a similar box and none of use own them. If I need another tool I just go to the tool room and get one. People leave there laptops and backpacks sitting on the coat racks while they go for dinner with no problems. It is very nice to live like this.

The people that we meet are usually very interesting and very nice. Allot of returning people have traveled all around the world and have very interesting lives off of "the ice". And most people want to be here, this is not the average job that you stumble into and you put up with 9 to 5 everyday. The jobs can be very dull, but the job is just a means to an end. It either gets people to "the ice" or it affords them to take 6 or 7 months off a year.

And for this weeks news, Paula and I got a two day weekend this week. It is only my second two day weekend since we have gotten here. And next weekend is Thanksgiving and so we get another two day weekend next week. It is a very nice change. We didn't do much exciting on our day off other than rest and do some chores. We also went to tour the powerplant. A friend of ours is a mechanic at the powerplant and he suggested that we come down for a tour since they had one of the six generators down for a 20,000 hours overhaul. At 20,000 hours they do a complete engine overhaul. This is a big task when you are talking about a V-16 CAT engine. The crankshaft along weighs 1500 lbs. Unfortunately our friend Matt is at the South Pole for a week working so we didn't get to see allot of the engine overhaul, but instead there was a bored GA (general assistant) there and he gave us a full tour of the powerplant, waterplant and wastewater plant. It is an interesting system that they have here. Currently they have six 900kW generators in one building and 3 reverse osmosis water purifiers in another building. There is a major construction project going on right now to redistribute the facilities. The waterplant will now house 2 RO units and two 1400kW generators. And then the powerplant will house 1 RO unit and 4 generators. This way if a building burns down the other building can support the town. Also they have a very impressive waste heat recovery system for the generators. The coolant and exhust heat from the generators is transfered to a coolant loop that is piped all around town to heat most of the dorms and the galley. This increases the fuel effiency of the powerplant greatly.

Well that is enough rambling on from me. Thanks to everone for their comments and e-mails. It is nice to here from people. Even if I don't have any photos of the new ambulance yet.

And since the only photos that I have taken this week have been of broken Ford transmission parts I will leave you with stolen photos from the public folder. They are from Lake Bonney which is a permanently ice covered lake in the Dry Valleys to the West of McMurdo. I just liked the photos because they look to me like the Ice Ages and glaciers crossing the continents.

Enjoy.
R.J.

What defines a real world bank!!!

A bank that is truly a world bank finds a way to have the only ATM on an entire continent!



And we have a winner for Contest #2. Mike Ende correctly identified the headlamp assembly as a Mid '70's Ward la France Ambassador headlamp. Aka Engine 51 from Emergency. And it is also installed on an equally ugly vehicle the Delta 2 and 3 from Foremost. We also have them on our P+H Crane and the two Nodwell Aircraft Crash Trucks.



Congratulations Mike. You are in with good company with Don Butcher as contest winners.

Contest #2

This contest is for a much narrower audience. Name this headlight assembly.





There is four answers that are I am aware of. I am expecting one specific person to get this. But there are several rogue players that might get it.

Paula and I will have a two day weekend this week and then again next week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. So after allot of work time we will get some extra time off. Maybe I will write some more, maybe it will be better. Don’t count on the latter.

And since this is a short post I have included the random photo of the week. So you feel like you are getting your monies worth.

Enjoy.
R.J.