Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2022/23

Personnel @LDC: Romain Duphil (IGE), Romilly Harris-Stuart (LSCE), Gunther Lawer (AWI), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Julien Westhof (UCPH), Martin Leonhardt (AWI), Frank Wilhelms (AWI), Giuditta Celli (UNIVE, ISP), Johannes Lemburg (AWI), Rob Mulvaney (BAS), Saverio Panichi (ENEA), Michele Scalet (ENEA), Andrea Devito (ENEA)

Personnel @DC: Markus Grimmer (UNIBE), Florian Krauß (UNIBE)

Weather at LDC 5 pm: sunny

Meteo at DC 5 pm: T = −°C, Wind = - knt, Wind Chill T = − °C

Another full day at the Camp with the Team deeply engaged to solve all the little problems arising. Cold lab in Concordia has also improved today.

What we did today:

- mounted outer tube of 2m drill for getting past the lower end of the casing

- put pig operational

- prepared well-head for transformation into a slush-pan (welding at DC)

- transformed well-head into a sieve

- mounted for EGRIP electronics to anti-torque

- mounted drill-string extraction winch (need stronger battery)

- started assembling EGRIP surface control unit

- finish fixing core processing tables to drill tent floor, allowing us to fix core processing rails securely to table

- began aligning core troughs using laser system

- set up FED extractor pump: made connections to FED extraction drum: began fixing pipes to FED system

Frank Wilhelms & Rob Mulvaney - LDC, 06.12.2022