Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Drilling Site (75.29917 degS, 122.44516 degE)

Situation Report #27, 28. December 2021

Personnel @LDC: Saverio Panichi (ENEA, Camp Leader), Carlo Barbante (ISP-CNR, PI), Olivier Alemany (IGE), Romain Duphil (IGE), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Calogero Monaco (ENEA), Philippe Possenti (IGE), Michele Scalet (ENEA), Jakob Schwander (unibe), Thomas Stocker (unibe), Remo Walther (unibe)

Personnel @DC: Gregory Teste (IGE)

Weather at LDC: sunny in the morning, fairly windy and covered during the entire afternoon

Meteo at DC 6 pm: T = −30°C, Wind = 5 knt, Wind Chill T = −37°C

Michele worked the entire day with the PB300 to prepare the LDC airfield of 2 km length, a total of 80,000 m2. Whoever drove a PB knows what skill is required to flatten a snow surface. Congratulations!

Saverio and Calogero took a ride to Dome C to bring back the snowblower unit, the firn core system, and 21 boxes of the BEOIC firn core. Coming back, they were loaded with a new supply of food.

In the drilling tent, the base of the BEOIC drill was completed and is now ready for the tower to be attached.

At RADIX we have had several time-consuming runs today due to multiple reasons. Some were related to remnant small shavings from the casing, occasional clogging by very small ice fragments, or missing attack of the drill head. These incidences have resulted in a refined drilling protocol which will hopefully reduce or eliminate these incidences at deeper depths.

Radix drilling depth: 250.0 m

Thomas Stocker and Carlo Barbante