It's critical to consider our main airplane-- the DASH-7.

I've decided to consider  the British research station at "Rothera" as an initial stop. I might change that later but for now it appears to have a good runway. The problem is that they only fly people in from the Falklands and from Chile but not Argentina. I'm currently at a hotel in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. Another observation I've made led the stratling realization that cruise ships and the maps they use don't concern themselves with research stations at all. Cruises go in circles and are useless. I'll have to go around Antarctica as a volunteer researcher I think. And so far, my favorite vehicle looks like the Dash-7.

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This DeHaviland-7 is a "Short Take Off and Landing" plane-- or STOL for short. It's incredible to watch. As it goes down the runway-- suddenly for no apparent reason, it's airborne before you can realize it. It's gut wrenching amazing just watching.

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In planning tonight, it now appears that a blogger reported flying from Rothera to Halley in a Dash-7 (presumably at 200+ mph) in 8 hours. It seems to me that that's twice as long as it should be. I'll double check in coming days. It's tricky to try to get and verify all these numbers-- I keep getting a different picture every time I do it.  For the moment-- it seems to me flying across the WEDDELL SEA should only be 4 hours. For that Antarctic coast line to be consistent with a flat earth, it has to be 4X the distance reported however, not just 2X. A globe earth has it at 14,000 miles-- a flat earth is 60,000 miles about 4X that.