It just occurred to me that accurate tracking of flights-- by number-- from and to various runways around Antarctica can be key to figuring out time and distance. Duh. I begin today with a look at the departures from Fossil Bluff that go to Halley with a Twin Otter-- known as Twotter.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
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Hi, I'm Captain Rick of the Virtual Circumference Voyage of Antarctica. I intend to prove definitively if Earth is flat or a sphere by paying careful attention to how many miles we cover as we travel "around" Antarctica. Flat earth theory says it's 50-60,000 miles. Spherical Earth theory says it 14,000 miles. Join me and ask any questions that you think would help our mission.
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ReplyDeleteThis MCMurdo "departure board" was on a link I found earlier
https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7684/width668/6rs5cyvn-1329267252.jpg
source: https://theconversation.com/the-antarctica-diaries-week-six-5346
Thanks-- I remember that now. We need more of these for every station. The one you linked cites McMurdo to Pole several time... there is a Thomas Hills-- I don't know where that is. And an AGAP Ridge-- I don't know where that is nor OWL. We see UNION GLACIER-- I know that location ... This schedule doesn't show fuel stops. Would they? I dunno. If Antarctica were the USAt, they'd be in real big trouble because there is no way to easily see incoming and outgoing flights to all stations. This might be a key to unlocking the mystery of the Ice Rim Antarctica-- a 60,000 mile no man's land where there ARE NO FLIGHTS from station to station-- but only continents to Antarctic shores with LIMITED routes to the "pole" south of McMurdo only.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing is, the total flight time for Pole to Ridge A is 9 hours according to the "departure board" [0900h to 1800h] but the description says it's just over 3.5 hours flying time! That leaves it at the refuelling point, AGAP South, for almost 5.5 hours....
DeleteThere's more detail here [high res photos]
http://mcba11.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mcba/spd5-large.html
We discover that the 800 litres of Jet-A1 that we need has already been air-dropped at a place called AGAP-South, which is about 200 km from Ridge A.
At 8:50am the Twin Otter takes off for the 2.5 hour trip to the AGAP-South refueling stop. It is then another 1.2 hours to Ridge A.
So, similar to the earlier reference. Again, the writer says the plane flies all the way back from the Pole without a stop - [because it's the same writer]
At 6pm the Twin Otter returns to the Pole
Ridge A, some 850 km from the South Pole itself....No one has ever been to Ridge A.
[previously]
The distances don't quite add up: 850-200 km = 650km+ [because the refuelling point might not be exactly on a straight line between the Pole and Ridge A.
2.5 hours vs 1.2 hours - slightly more than a factor of 2.
650 km vs 200 km is more than a factor of 3.
Something not quite right there.
...and this video now increases the distance between the Pole and Ridge A to 1000 km!
Deletehttps://vimeo.com/58051465
more details here another year [sorry to get bogged down in Ridge A but it's not adding up]
Deletehttp://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/~z3318051/spd/spd.php?date=20130117_GeoffA
Today, our first PAX flight took off to Ridge A. Before we got to Ridge A however, the Twin Otter must re-fuel somewhere. That somewhere is a place called AGAP-South, around 2.5 hrs from the South Pole. AGAP-South is an ex-geologicial camp which is now purely a fuel cache.
The fuel dump en route to Ridge A:
http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/~z3318051/spd/pics/s20130117-agapBarrels.jpg
Refuelling: [does this take 5.5 hours? There's nothing else to do there....
http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/~z3318051/spd/pics/s20130117-agapRefuel.jpg
In fact, refuelling is described as lasting only 0.5 hrs:
After half an hour of re-fuelling, we took off on the 1.5 hr flight to Ridge A...
From the next day's blog...
We arrived at Ridge A at approximately 13:30 NZDT (or around 05:00 local time)
But it had been very busy at the Pole...
http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/~z3318051/spd/spd.php?date=20130116_john
And this is where it gets distinctly odd..
They fly all the way back from Ridge A to the Pole in 2 hours or so! I wouldn't call 3.5 hours plus half hour implicit refuelling "a couple of hours":
Within a couple of hours, we were back at the South Pole (via AGAP-South again),
both we and the German Basler had been allocated the same ski-way slot of 0900hrs!
This final post makes it clear that the plane is actually refuelled both directions [with photos]
http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/~z3318051/spd/spd.php?date=20130123_john
with an additional observation
Ridge A is sufficiently far from the south pole that it experiences a significant diurnal cycle, although at this time of year the sun never comes even close to setting.
PS I now read the "departure board" that this is a round trip of 9 hours. OK - ignore the stopover time thoughts above.
So is round trip 2000 km or 1700 km? And why place the fuel dump much nearer Ridge A than the Pole?
You really want the fuel dump 2/3 of the way to Ridge A. So 2.5 to 1.2 hours makes sense. But 650:200 km or even 800km:200 km is not a factor of 2:1
DeleteI'm probably bogged down in sloppiness on the part of the writers.