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First Flight

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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Thursday August 21: The first flight of Winfly 2003 (and also my mom's birthday!). Winfly is short for Winter Flights - a weeklong series of flights in late August. Cargo, mail, food, and personnel come in on these flights, which are sort of a staging process for the summer season. The summer officially begins in late September / early October, and this is known as Mainbody in local dialect. Another example of a saying you won't hear anywhere else is "redeploying". When you come down to the ice, you're "deploying". When you return to the world, you're "redeploying". Right. So anyway, Winfly came and went this year without any significant problems. Usually, the weather or other factors will cause delays and the flights are rarely completed on schedule. This year was different. Instead of having 5-6 C141's fly down, they decided to use 3 C17's, which are much larger. The first flight was supposed to be on the 20th, but a snowstorm on the 19th put the runway at Pegasus field into disarray so they had to spend the 20th clearing the field. The first flight landed around 12:30 on 8/21, the second flight came in on 8/22, and the third flight came in on 8/24...right on schedule. They wanted to have a day in between each flight, but were able to do flights on 8/21 and 8/22 because two complete C17 flight crews were available in Christchurch. So anyhoo, it all went pretty smoothly. For the first flight, I was able to tag along with my buddy Dave out to the TACAN (tactical aid to navigation). This station is located a couple hundred feet from the runway and serves to broadcast bearing and distance information to incoming aircraft. A pretty neat instrument...and expensive. His guess is about 2.5 million for the whole thing. So we drove out early in the morning and camped out in the TACAN shelter. It was cramped, but pretty nice since the TACAN is a ways from the main Pegasus area...and we had the place to ourselves. And it's a great view of the runway, too. The only problem was that my digital camera had basically quit on me the week before. It could still take movies OK, but the still photos were getting really crappy. I brought along a digital camera from the Crary lab, but even though it had two fresh batteries, it refused to turn on. So I was left without any means to take pictures. But some kind soul did take some good one, and put these on the common drive a few days later. So every picture on this page except the movie files and the three pics from inside the TACAN are by some unknown person, not me. I think it was one of the fire crew, judging by the close proximity to the runway. Anyway, this first pic is of Pegasus town on the morning of the 21st. Nice colors!

A nice pic of a snowblower doing some last minute maintenance on the area before the flight.
Here's me, in the TACAN. There's not much room, but somebody left a pile of packing material in the corner. This looks like a rat's nest, but it was reasonably comfortable. Dave picked up some bag lunches from the galley and I brought along a cd player. So not a bad way to pass the time. Note the bags under my eyes - I didn't get much sleep the night before...I suppose I was kind of anxious about this flight!
A picture of the vehicle parade, lined up and awaiting access to the runway.
This is a movie file (.avi) of the scene as we awaited the flight. It moves right to left, looking over the vehicles lined up near the field, Pegaus town, and finally the runway.
So here it comes - the C17. It arrived a little earlier than expected, probably due to a tailwind. Dave happened to step out of the TACAN for some other reason and immediately rushed back in to say it was in sight. We grabbed our cameras and went out to watch the landing.
De plane! De plane!
Another movie file here. This is the C17 touching down. In the weeks before the flight, there was a pool started on station. $50 and you could buy a minute. If the wheels touched down on your minute, you get the pot. There were 60 slots, so the winner took $3000. Bob from Fleet Ops ended up winning the biggest jackpot of winter. I was the previous lucky winner, having won $1200 at bingo one day. Anyway, I couldn't believe how quiet this plane was when it flew by. In this movie file you can hardly hear it. The real noise only started after it touched down and started braking. It was MUCH louder near the end of the runway than it was as it passed by. If I had to choose one word to describe the LC130, it would be "masculine". The C141 is "sleek". The C17 is "quiet". They are having a few C5 flights during the summer this year, for the first time in several years. I'd love to see one of these. Until the Russians built a bigger one, this was the largest aircraft in the world.
The C17, coming to rest at the unloading area.
This aircraft is a pretty impressive piece of machinery.
Here is the C17 again, with the vehicles getting ready to descend upon it.
A closeup of the badass C17.
This was the official end of winter...time for a small celebration. It was my first winter, and Dave's third (in a row). And it was long. Here's me, toasting.
And here's Dave, toasting back.
A few pics here of the C17 being unloaded. First, out comes the cargo.
A closer view of one of our loaders and the C17.
Then...the people. Lots of them. Our winter population at McMurdo was 197. On this flight, about 140 people came in and about 50 left. So literally overnight, one out of every two people on station was a new arrival. With the second flight the next day, three out of four people were "new". This was, quite honestly, a huge shock to my system. And I wasn't alone. Many of the winter overs were a little tweaked out with all the new faces. Lots of tanned, energetic people had come to invade OUR station. They were using our bathrooms, sitting at our tables in the galley, living in our dorms....you get the idea. This was a very strange feeling for me - one I hadn't felt before. It was a strange combination of increased energy, anxiety, surliness, territoriality (is this a word?) and overall stress that I felt. It took me a solid week to get accustomed to the new station. At this writing on September 3, I'm still feeling a little crusty. It's strange - I didn't feel especially crusty before the flight arrived, but I sure did afterwards! I'm still eating by myself in the galley most of the time. Unless I see a table with only my winter-over friends or the few people I already knew who arrived at Winfly, I'd much rather eat by myself. I am always friendly and cordial to everyone, but I'd rather not exert the effort to make superfluous conversation with people I don't know (and this does take effort!). But overall, my energy level has gone up noticeably since the first flight. My mental sharpness has returned and I feel more like I did over the summer. The winter went pretty well for me, all things considered, but I'm glad to have the light back! Anyway, this picture shows the people stepping off the plane. Notice the woman on the far right, with the deer-in-the-headlights look. Funny! I'm pretty sure this is her first time here. This is probably exactly how I looked when I stepped off the plane last October....
The invading hordes await pickup by Ivan the Terrabus. We got 400 lbs of fresh fruits and vegetables on the flight ("freshies" in local speak). Our head chef Jan decided to reserve these for the winterovers. So they were sorted into little brown bags and you could go into the back of the galley and pick them up that very day. Most excellent!!! Speaking of Jan, it was good to have this guy as our chef during the winter. The food was significantly better than during the summer. This was partly due to the fact that it's easier to cook for 200 than for 1000, but even so, the galley crew was awesome this winter.
Another one of a cargo pallet being unloaded. My ***NEW CAMERA*** arrived safe and sound on this flight. The following week, we had some incredible mind-blowing scenery, and I was able to take some killer photos. It was the most spectacular week I've seen here....I hope to get some pictures up on this site reasonably soon.
A little movie file of the C17 turning around to head back down the runway. I was getting cold, so I stepped into the van and took this one.
And here it goes - speeding down the runway to take off. Dave and I stepped back into the van after this, thinking the plane was gone for good. But we turned around a few minutes later to see the plane doing an incredibly low fly-by. This was friggin' gnarly. It took us by surprise, so no pictures. But it was quite the sight. As it turns out, it did that low pass to check out the PAPI lights (Precision Approach Path Indicators, I think).
One last random picture here: an Automatic Weather Station. These things are scattered all over the continent and serve to relay meteorological data to the U. of Wisconsin, which maintans an Antarctic weather service (see here). One such station is located near the TACAN at Pegasus, so I walked out to take a look. This is also an example of the kind of pictures my old camera was taking - grainy, with screwed up colors. But it's a cool effect I suppose.