LIST OF RUNWAYS IN ANTARCTICA available on Wikipedia!?
List of airports in Antarctica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Antarctica
AIRPORTS in ANTARCTICA
source; http://worldaerodata.com/countries/Antarctica.php
McMURDO AIRPORT DETAILS FOR PILOTS
Rick says: McMurdo is in the opposite direction I want to go right now but I wanted to begin looking at airport descriptions and this is the first one I found. Note the partially coded langauge. Note the possibility of helicopter landings. Note also "use at your own risk" if you're not a US Antarctic Program participant. There are more details on the source page. McMurdo is definitely on my list of stops on my virtual cirumnavigation of Antarctica to determine the actually coastal length.
Source: http://worldaerodata.com/wad.cgi?id=AY00002
HotLink: World Aero Data: MCMURDO STATION ICE RUNWAY -- NZIR
PROSPECTIVE AIRPORT LANDINGS to time and locate
Rick says... I'm beginning to get an idea of what it's like to get from Punta Arenas, Chile to the British station ROTHERA-- then to get to the next substantial base at Halley (above lower left)-- going through the FUEL DEPOT either at Fossil Ridge or Sky-Blu. Note above that NEUMAYER (a German base) has an airport and is on the coast. Next over, we see SANAE IV, open year round with an airport. To it's right, its TROLL, also open yearround with a landing strip. From there, we find NOVO..SKAYA (for short)... although the marking is a little confused. It does look open year round with an airport. I look for year round bases with landing strips because I want to get a handle on the reports of FLIGHT TIMES with various crews moving around. So the mission should go from .... Rothera to Sky-Blu ... from there to Halley-- to Neumayer... to Sanae IV... I would SKIP Troll because it's too far inland.... I'd like to go from Sanae IV to Novo...Skaya.
Now that I have a handle on the types of planes we'll be using-- the Dash-7, the Twin Otter, the Hercules and the Ilyusha-- I can develop a better understanding of possible ranges and cruising speeds. If the Antarctic coast line is 60,000 miles instead of 14,000 miles, I should be able to find anomalous reports on blogs about the time it takes to get from one location to another. Or-- on the other hand-- if the reports seem perfectly credible and are consistent with aircraft specifications, maybe the earth will turn out to be a sphere after all-- I'm sort of 50/50 right now.
Here's a German owned Twin Otter on skis. The German base I'll be shooting for is NEUMAYER... and I'll arrive there from Halley. Just one small point about those hidden fuel depots -- so far it seems that they're more inland. I might be wrong about that--- and they may be on the coast. I'll be watching for blogger who talk about fuel stops along the way from Halley to Neumayer. A rough guestimate right now of the distance from Halley to Neumayer is 1000 miles and 15 degrees of longitude-- not sure which lines of longitude without looking it up. I'll get the numbers later. I would think the trip would take 5-6 hours at 200 mph in a Twin Otter with no extra fuel drums on board. Germans at Neumayer definitely use Halley-- I've seen it reported on blogs. The Germans and British seem to cooperate a lot although only the Americans use Hercules to airdrop fuel drums-- as far as I know. I haven't seen the Russian Ilyushka drop fuel drums yet, but it very well could.
I found this great photo of an ice runway- used for the Dash 7 and other larger planes-- the Hercules and Ilyusha-- on a site by ANI, a private operator for tourists in the Antarctic-- apparently the only one. I'll talk about them more later. For now, enjoy this photo of a "blue ice runway".... the type I'm assuming we'll find at Rothera-SkyBlu, Halley, Neumayer and NovoSkyu.... my primary FIVE primary PERIMETER planned landings so far.
Rick says... ANI says these ice runways are the cornerstone of their operations. But earlier, I determined that fuel depots were cornerstones. Maybe it's both. We need ice-runway AND fuel. We should look for BOTH as we fly around the perimiter of Antarctica trying to figure out how far it is in reality.
