Listening patiently

One of my many odds jobs around the station when I'm not seeing patients, stocking store shelves, or washing dishes is to man the HF radios for flight activity from Christchurch to McMurdo. South Pole does backup flight following for Mac Center, serving as another set of ears listening for position reports from the planes as sometimes radio communications on the continent can be sketchy.

Comms is now the SOC, or Station Operations Center, the new comms facility in the Elevated Station. While it doesn't have the comfy charm and character of old Comms which used to be under the Dome, it does have nice big windows where you can look out at the skiway, the Dark Sector and the pole itself.

Here's a view of the Dark Sector buildings. And that's only half of the Pez dispenser collection.

This is the radio - no longer the old one with toggle switches and dials.

And a wonderful new feature, the spycams, I mean webcams. You can check out live shots at
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spwebcam.cfm while our satellite is up (currently about 9:30am to 8:30pm central time).

We have one C-17 and two LC-130s en route from Christchurch to McMurdo as I write this. So far, it's not looking good temperature wise for having company on Saturday. Nothing else to do except wait patiently...