Arctic field season, probably

[jay]

It looks increasingly like I'll be doing some more fieldwork on Devon Island (76N, 90W) this July -- my travel orders have gone to NASA Headquarters for review, and we just resolved (in a telecon) the necessary technical collaborations.

Target dates are currently:
7/16 leave San Francisco, overnight in Edmonton (Wednesday dinner?)
7/17 Edmonton to Resolute (via Yellowknife and Cambridge Bay)
7/18 Resolute to Devon Island (chartered Twin Otter)

7/26 Devon Is. to Resolute to Edmonton (Saturday dinner?)
7/27 Edmonton (Sunday brunch?) to San Francisco

7/26 should be interesting travel-wise, that's 4 hops in one day (Twin Otter, Beech 1900, and two combi 737s)

This summer, I'm going to do more field geology site surveys with the Hamilton-Sundstrand spacesuit folks, adding data points to last summer's work.

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

The CRS shows non-specified Beech turboprops for Ken Borek Aviation, DBA a Canadian North codeshare, between Cambridge Bay and Resolute. My assumption (incorrectly) had been the larger Super King Air 19-passenger pressurized 1900 often seen in southern commuter-airline use, but (looking at the borekair.com site) it looks like it could be either one of the smaller 12-passenger 100/200 series or even the unpressurized 99s. It just didn't occur to me that anything smaller than 19-passengers would be in *scheduled* use, even in Nunavut...

And the Edmonton-Yellowknife-Cambridge Bay route is preferentially on Canadian North... because they codeshare with Ken Borek and hence can quote a through-fare. Besides, FirstAir tries to route everything through Iqualuit now, since they discontinued their western jet service to Resolute within the past year.

Volunteer stuff: Pascal Lee (pclee@earthlink.net) is the project lead, he also coordinates volunteers for camp support. There are probably also opportunities with individual investigators: Dr. Alain Berinstain (Hull Univ. and CSA, studying plant growth in closed systems with a new greenhouse erected last summer on Devon, Alain.Berinstain@space.gc.ca) or if you have any video/media production experience, Sam Burbank (samburbank@earthlink.net).

Other background stuff can be found on http://www.arctic-mars.org ...

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

Ahhh thanks (grins).... mystery solved :)

Definately will follow up/pursue the volunteer thing. I'm still working out the logistics of the timing and available flights, and hence costs. Thanks for the link and the emails, and the welcome. I really hope I'm able to make it up this year. Although I suppose if I luck out I can always shoot for next year with more planning/lead time.

If I don't make it up there myself, I'll certainly be looking forward to your posts. LOL actually I'll be looking forward to them either way :)

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

By the way, what's a PITA? And Alain's actually at Univ. Guelph, not Hull (ulp!), in addition to being the CSA lead for the project.

You mentioned "your" airplanes... hmmm... do you fly them or fix them? If perchance the latter, the project is lacking our camp manager and chief mechanic (John Schutt) for the last 10 days of the season (he's off to Greenland for a couple of weeks). We don't repair aircraft (a bit of Twin Otter or helicopter maintenance, occasionally), but have generators and a fleet of ATVs that are frequently abused.

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

PITA = Pain in the ass :)

My airplanes... (grins) unfortunately no, I don't fix em, and haven't finished my license yet for flying them. Actually I'm a dispatcher (we do all that nasty ugly paperwork and math stuff for the pilots... hey someone has to tell em where to go!). That makes me a performance calculation and weather geek.

I'm currently with Calm Air (www.calmair.com). We're a regional based out of Thompson, and covering Manitoba and the Kivalliq region of Nunavut (The Hudson Bay coast).