{"id":28,"date":"2015-08-03T04:52:36","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T04:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/?p=28"},"modified":"2015-08-03T13:50:19","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T13:50:19","slug":"getting-riggy-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/2015\/08\/03\/getting-riggy-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting riggy with it…"},"content":{"rendered":"

It always amazes me how easy it is to get from a seemingly \u201cnormal\u201d, populated environment to a very remote, very Arctic feeling place.\u00a0 It\u2019s only about a 1.5 hour flight from Anchorage to Deadhorse, but the end points represent totally different worlds.\u00a0 Upon arriving at the airport, you deplane from the Alaska Airlines 737, from the back door, by stairs, because it is a \u201ccombi\u201d aircraft meaning that the front half is set up for cargo and the back half for passengers.\u00a0 We deplaned and realized that we were one person short. \u00a0Since the airplane continues on to Barrow from Deadhorse, only about 1\/3 to 1\/2 of the passengers on board actually deplane, and the rest stay seated. \u00a0Thinking Nathan\u00a0may have fallen asleep and wasn\u2019t aware that we were at our destination, we sent the agent on board to find him.\u00a0 Turns out he was just talking with his seat mates and didn\u2019t realize that he needed to deplane rather quickly!\u00a0 Once we collected our bags, we met up with Al in the terminal, loaded our gear into his truck, picked up our equipment from Northern Air Cargo (it all made it \u2014 yay!) and headed over to get our rental truck.\u00a0 After letting Al check out of his Deadhorse hotel and grabbing a \u201cto go\u201d lunch there, we set out on the road to Oliktok.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/a>

Final approach into Deadhorse airport.<\/p><\/div>\n

Knowing that the oil rig was likely still blocking the road, we developed a rather complicated plan to get ourselves and all of our gear out to the Air Force facility.\u00a0 Sure enough, the massive piece of equipment was sitting in the middle (ok, let\u2019s be honest, on all of) the road.\u00a0 It amazes me that these things can just be driven around from site to site.\u00a0 I\u2019ll spare you all of the details, but in the end, we succeeded in getting ourselves and our stuff to Oliktok.\u00a0 Never mind that one of our trucks is currently parked at a camp about 15 miles from here, or that we had to essentially portage all of our gear around the stuck rig \u2014 we got here, and that\u2019s all that matters.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The stuck rig — to get an idea of the scale of this thing, check out the door and staircase on the right hand side!<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Portaging<\/a>

Portaging gear from one truck to the other along the narrow on-road path along the side of the rig. \u00a0Again, check out the scale relative to the people walking alongside it!<\/p><\/div>\n

Once on site, we went through both USAF and Sandia orientations to get acquainted with the site and learn about how to handle bear encounters.\u00a0 While the latter may seem excessive, the odds of running into a bear (either grizzly or polar) are substantial enough to want to know what you\u2019re doing.\u00a0 In fact, as we made our way back to the USAF facility for dinner, one of the oilfield security trucks stopped us to let us know that a grizzly bear had been spotted in the area, and that we should be on the lookout.<\/p>\n

After spending the afternoon and evening assembling\u00a0equipment, we\u2019re pretty much ready to begin some flight activities tomorrow morning.\u00a0 We still have some final strings to tie up, which is ok, because the weather quickly went from great for flying (good visibility, light winds) to miserable for flying (rain, windy, low visibility).\u00a0 Based on the forecast, I think that tomorrow will not be a very good day for flights, with more rain and wind expected, but may be good enough for some calibration flights.\u00a0 Tuesday and beyond look much better, with lighter winds and little precipitation.\u00a0 We\u2019re looking forward to getting started!<\/p>\n

\"Six<\/a>

Five DataHawk 2 aircraft — ready for action after spending the afternoon in assembly and preparation mode.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It always amazes me how easy it is to get from a seemingly \u201cnormal\u201d, populated environment to a very remote, very Arctic feeling place.\u00a0 It\u2019s only about a 1.5 hour flight from Anchorage to Deadhorse, but the end points represent totally different worlds.\u00a0 Upon arriving at the airport, you deplane from the Alaska Airlines 737,… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-19 20:53:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}