Wet phone threatened to cut off expedition (via g* yahoo thread)
C I N C I N N A T I P O S T
Race to the pole
By David Wecker, Post staff reporter
RESOLUTE BAY, Nunavut - Now in its eighth day of its
march to the North Pole, the Aspirations Expedition is
struggling to maintain contact with civilization.
The 11-member expedition team - which includes Craig Kurz,
37, of Anderson Township and Doug Hall, 40, of Newtown -
dealt with two significant issues in the past two days. The
first involved the failure of Hall's global satellite telephone
due to moisture, and the second centered on trying to arrange
a supply drop.
On Tuesday evening, when Hall tried to call the team's base
camp here, he realized moisture had somehow gotten into his
Motorola Iridium phone and it wasn't working. The team's
leader, Paul Schurke, has his high frequency radio, so the
team still could communicate with the outside world - but just
barely, because its signal is highly dependent on ionospheric
conditions. The telephone, when it's working, transmits and
receives far more clearly.
Schurke tried unsuccessfully to wipe its innards dry with
toilet paper. He then put the pieces above the stove.
Once the phone was reassembled, it worked again. At least,
Hall was able to get through to his assistant, Kari
McCampbell in Newtown - although she was not able to hear
him.
'Doug figures it's a miracle that the phone is able to work at
all,' Ms. McCampbell said.
The team spent the day Monday looking for a suitable place
for a plane to land. The plan had been for a Kenn Borek Air
Ltd. flight, en route to the Pole from the Canadian weather
base in Eureka, to land on the ice with more d og food and dry
soup mix. At the same time, the plane would pick up one of
the team's smaller sleds and film.
By Monday evening, the team was camped next to an ideal
stretch of flat ice. During its regular telephone conference
with the team's base manager in Resolute, Schurke described
the site and also reported that the sled weighed only about 50
pounds.
The planes used for polar flights are called Twin Otters,
18-seaters powered by two jet engines that drive propellers.
A Twin Otter can carry about 2,500 pounds, and each flight is
calculated to the last pound. Twin Otters carry about five
hours of fuel. They can't be too heavy, either with fuel or
cargo, because they're landing on ice and it's hard to tell how
thick the ice is or how much weight it can support. Planes
have broken through the ice and been lost on such landings.
The night sky on Monday was a clear light blue. But the team
awoke to a heavy cloud cover with a ceiling of about 1,000
feet - a landing would have been too dangerous to attempt.
So the team pressed on, hoping to find another potential
landing strip and clearer skies Wednesday.
Publication date: 04-22-99
Copyright 1999 The Cincinnati Post, an E.W. Scripps newspaper.
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