Greenland!

It has been almost two years since my last field work for the MIRL lab and now I'm off to someplace great - GREENLAND! Not Greenland, NH, Greenland the country under the Kingdom of Denmark. I've had several people here in NH ask me to clarify that I was not staying in the state...

We have one of our magnetometer systems located at the Sondrestrom Research Facility. When it was decided that I would go to Greenland, it was because no one had visited our system since the install in 2007 and we wanted to make sure that everything was okay - no animal chewed on our cable, or the acquisition system was still operating within normal parameters. Now my travel has become imperative.

A few weeks ago, I was attending Radar Summer School in Banff, Canada (one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited (view photos here)) and as part of the school we were given incoherent scatter radar data to analyse and some of the data came from Sondrestrom. In an effort to look at the data in a variety of ways, I wanted to plot our magnetometer data, but was unable to log into the system. When I e-mailed the technician at the station, he said that the system was powering on, but he was also unable to log onto the machine. After some troubleshooting, we think the video card and possibly the processor are burned out. After working continuously for five years, they have been good cards. I'm on my way to replace the cards and get the system back up and running. As well as maybe learn more about the incoherent scatter radar they have in Greenland.

My travel schedule is a bit funny for getting up to Greenland. I am currently writing this on the C&J bus that will take me to Boston-South Station. I will then take an Amtrak train to Albany, NY (round trip ticket between Boston and Albany was only $85!). Then take a taxi up to my hotel in Clifton Park, NY. Tomorrow at 0500, there will be a bus to take me to the nearby air force base, where I will then be put on a C-130 plane for the 6 - 7 hour flight up to Greenland. It is not an exact time because we might or might not stop in Newfoundland for refueling. Then Greenland!

I'll try to post some pictures and updates when I can - the internet up there does not have the largest bandwidth.