A Basler at Davis-Ward, from the 2018-2019 field season.

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to a “no news is good news” edition of the ANSMET blog.  Yesterday our second Basler flight went from McMurdo to Davis-Ward, delivering Erin, Robert and Lauren and a bunch of gear. I got several third-hand reports (from Jim and field team family members) that it all went great,  and by evening all the new arrivals were resting snug in their tents.   Weather permitting,  Jim and Jon are scheduled to fly from McMurdo to Davis-Ward today, so please everyone keep the positive vibes flowing southward.

Out of fairness, I should also remind you all that “no news is good news” posts are likely to be more frequent from here on out, as the field season gets to work at the icefields. We are all eager to hear news directly from this year’s team at Davis-Ward, but I am not sure how often we’ll hear from them,  or how much content they’ll be able to create and/or share. As we’ve done in the past, the field team plans to use satellite modems utilizing the Iridium satellite phone system,  which has a hard cap on network speeds. You’ve hear of Gigabit internet?  Welcome back to Kilobit internet (in this case from about 500 kb to almost 1000 kb).  We bought an upgraded Iridium modem for the season,  which has been tested out in McMurdo. But there really is no work-around for the slow speeds.  We had discussed trying out the Starlink system, which is nearly 100x faster, but its increased power needs and other complexities would have added yet another “unknown” to what we already knew would be a very challenging season. Add in long, hard-working days associated with a shortened timeline, and we shouldn’t begrudge them a night or two without blogging.  If all goes well I’ll start getting posts and pictures directly from the field soon,  and I promise to share them with you as soon as I can.

-Ralph, from sodden Novelty OH.