Working on the Twin Otter

Today was a cold clear day as the wind continued to blow hard. And most of our work was on the Twin Otter so we here outside most of the day. Here is a picture of me the day before when it was quite warm, so you can see I have a lot less cold weather gear on. All the instruments are on the Twin Otter, but that is only half the battle, now we have to hook everything up and make sure they are working properly. I had a slight problem, the port that I am sampling from was a pretty tight fit during the Calgary test flights. Since it is some much colder here, the metal has contracted so much that I can not really use my inlet. So Jason and I took the sampling port off, and I took it up to the Machine Shop where they are going to machine some of the metal off (to make the hole a little bit bigger). On the way to the shop I snapped this picture of Mt. Erebus. Mt. Erebus is an active volcano, just a mile or so from McMurdo. We are actually going to sample some of gases coming from Mt. Erebus once we get everything hooked up and working properly. The machine and Carpenter shops are one the far side of McMurdo (up the hill a bit). So after climbing up there, I thought I should take a photo of the view from the top. In the background you can see the ice runway with all the planes. Later on when things settle down a bit, I was hoping to climb observatory hill, a small mountain right next to McMurdo (not shown in this photo) and get some even better photos of the town.