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DAVID KNOFF – FIELD LEADER
David Knoff is a former military officer and Davis station chief. He was discipline chief for the Denman Terrestrial Marketing campaign, managing personnel and Edgeworth David base camp.
What have been among the greatest challenges, managing a gaggle this measurement in such a distant location? You are dwelling in a tent for weeks on finish, in 60 knot winds and it’s −10, −15° Celcius and your water bottle is freezing in your tent, however the minute the solar got here, everybody was so eager to get to work once more. And that was attention-grabbing, having to handle the fatigue of others as a result of they’d work till eight o’clock at evening and be up and able to go the subsequent day. Typically I’d need to say “OK, we’re going to do a half day tomorrow. We’re going to get sleep and have a late begin so folks can recharge”.
You’ve been a station chief earlier than, how totally different is it being a discipline chief? Stations are fairly routine. At first, you’ve bought resupply and handover and there’s a set checklist of procedures to comply with and thru the summer time, you’ve bought very clear goals – the ship is coming, or the runway is opening after which flights are coming out and in. We had none of that. We didn’t run to a calendar, we made all the pieces match across the science, which meant the climate dictated what we did.
How necessary was climate forecasting? The Bureau of Meteorology has three forecasters at Casey and one based mostly in Hobart, and the assist we bought was unimaginable. To have the ability to get correct forecasts for therefore many various places meant that each afternoon we’d take a look at the forecast for the subsequent couple of days and say, OK Monday appears to be like good for this space then Tuesday, it’s higher some place else, and Wednesday it’s going to be restricted so it’ll simply be a half day. Typically if the helicopters have been grounded folks might stroll to a sampling location and stroll again, or camp in the event that they needed to.
How did the day begin? The turbines would begin up at 6am and then you definitely’d get your self up and dressed and make some porridge for breakfast. One problem we had was that in −10° Celcius, honey isn’t overly liquid so we repurposed a battery heater to be a honey heater. Then we’d sit round a WhatsApp convention name at 9am for a climate temporary – myself, the pilots, the senior discipline coaching officer, the science coordinator and the comms operator. Many of the scientists would collect round a central spot close to the espresso, so we’d go in and make sure the plan for the day.
How many individuals might the choppers take at a time? You possibly can get 5 – 6 in there, with the pilot, however it actually trusted how a lot gear there was. If a gaggle was doing sediment coring or rock sampling, they’d have some actually heavy drills or they’d be bringing again lots of samples so it might take two or three journeys. The helicopters have been truly used to do science as effectively – the recent water drilling groups used a floor penetrating radar so there’s a radar attachment that they’d sling underneath the helicopter and so they’d fly over the ice and do survey work.
How typically would you arrange a distant camp? There have been a couple of dozen and a few have been for very lengthy durations. RAID 1 went for a couple of month however others have been simply three or 4 days. We did lots of in a single day journeys for the drone UAV groups as a result of it was typically simpler simply to ship them out with all their gear and so they’d keep on the market and fly their patterns.
There was a delay at one stage as a result of one of many helicopters wanted a spare half. How did you handle that? They stored a spare engine at Casey so that each potential half they may want was there. The unique plan was to ship an engineer to get the half however in the long run they despatched the entire engine again to Bunger Hills, very rigorously packed!
It sounds just like the schedule was pushed to the restrict to get that final little bit of sampling at Mt Strathcona completed. It was getting very late within the season and there was strain to pack up the camp and begin sending folks again to Casey. That was most likely the place I earned my cash as discipline chief as a result of I needed to go OK, we have to stroll the tremendous line between wringing out the final necessary science we have to do, retrieve a number of devices that we nonetheless had mendacity out in the midst of nowhere and begin packing up the camp. We began to make issues a bit extra austere – we packed up the bathe tents and began to eliminate the freezers, so dinner turned a bit easier and the vibe modified however folks have been simply so blissful to get the final of the science completed. And we completed on a really excessive notice, which was an absolute blue sky day.
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