Alarms, Orca's, and Auroras. pt 1

Alarms, orca's, and auroras. I'm pretty sure that's what I promised you last time, and I've been too damn busy with work to have any new fun since then, so let's do it. 

<Another blog post in three parts, because I write too much, too slowly.>

Alarms

Hydrogen is wonderful. It is abundant, as a gas is lighter than air, and it can be isolated by forcing electricity through water.

Hydrogen is terrifying. It is outrageously explosive. It is odourless, colourless, and tasteless. It burns with invisible flames, and embrittles metals. 

I regularly use hydrogen to fill rubber balloons because of the virtues I listed above.
I wear a full flash coat due to the drawbacks.

Personal protective equipment is the least effective method of risk mitigation though, so as well as a flash coat, hood, googles, gloves, and antistatic boots, we use deionised airflow and implement a network of hydrogen sensors and alarms.

As part of my regular maintenance workflow I perform monthly checks that:

• the sensors are detecting hydrogen at calibration level as they should
• the emergency stops are activated correctly if alarm level is reached
• audible alarms and flashing lights are activated if hydrogen is detected.

In early April I performed my first set of hydrogen alarm verification on Macquarie Island, and, alarmingly, the alarms didn't work.

It's a complicated little manoeuvre to pull off, especially when everyone is still new to the station. I go in to the hazardous area, pump 1L/min of 2% hydrogen in air through a sensor, which hits 20% of the lower flammability limit (LFL) of hydrogen. This should trigger the warning level of our gas detector, which activates the emergency stop, buzzers and sirens in our office, and voice alarms in the mess and accommodation block.

If everything is according to plan I then increase the flow rate of calibration gas to 2L/min, reach 40% of the LFL of hydrogen, and the detector goes into "alarm" state - more voice alarms, more sirens, everything gets very exciting.

It's my first time on the island, my first time doing one of these checks in years, and its a safety system intended to prevent me from exploding; I was being pretty meticulous this time around. And eventually it became clear that everything is not hunky dory.

This put me in the uncomfortable position of needing to debug an alarm system that makes a lot of noise in the main living quarters on station, but I can't hear from point of activation. Only way to tick this box is to ask a lot of people to hang out and listen for loud noises, and make a lot of chatter on the radio.

I was able to determine that everything worked fine at 20% of the lower flammability level, but all the voice systems went silent at 40% (Alarm == silence is the opposite of what I want).

This issue sent me on a multi-day adventure, tearing apart rat's nests of black-magic circuitry, potentially hacked at by various techs over the years, looking for... something that didn't look right. I started off assuming that a component had broken, but you know what they say about assumptions...

Skipping a whole lot of electrical best guessing and estimation, I eventually found out that a previous tech had (hopefully) unintentionally tied the power rail of my alarm relays to the "normally closed" pin on the gas detectors 40% alarm relay. Basically means that everything is fine, right up until the alarm goes off, when all the alarms get switched on, but disconnected from power.

This guy here is the gas detector.

And this is the Met alarms. Lots of lights, everyone is very excited.

Welcome to the rat's nest. The two boxes on the right are full of wiring as well. 

... the front panel is wired up too... 

Relays that activate my alarms.

Found the culprit! That red wire shouldn't be there...

Fortunately figuring out what was wrong was by far the hardest part this time, I fixed it by moving that long red wire ("F") down one connection, and everything makes sense again. The alarms are annoying when they should be annoying now, and I should hopefully be that little bit less likely to blow myself up.

I feel like that may have been a particularly boring blog post. Lots of discussion of work things and wires, very little Macquarie Island or Antarctica. In the name of entertainment here are a few snippets of what I actually do with the hydrogen -

This is where I was taught to release weather balloons. 

This is where I really learned how. 

And this is where I'm doing it at the moment :)

Field Training Take 2 (Part 2)

... so... I've been a bit distracted, there were alarms and orcas and auroras and it's all slowly making it's way down the pipeline to you. But I've neglected this story far too long (possibly out of embarrassment? You'll see why in a moment), lets kick on ...

Happy campers one and all.

Straight back into the featherbed! We're trudging along early on the second morning. It's a lovely day and I'm enjoying just being outside so I've zoned into walking, I'm at the end of the group and lost in thought, just following footsteps.

We're walking through water at the time, I can literally see the ground ripple with every step, but i'm in gumboots and I'm feeling good. Half a step ahead I see a very narrow, clear little stream. No dramas, gumboots, no need to adjust trajectory.

...

One of the valuable lessons that I learned while field training at Macca is that clear little streams are in fact dirty great lies. They are, in fact, portals to subterranean oceans.

Unfathomable depths.

I was saved from a watery grave by virtue of it being quite a narrow bottomless abyss, so I only fell knee deep before my other leg got stuck on what passes as ground in the featherbed. So began stage two of my impromptu practical education on Macquarie Island: gumboots are waterproof in both directions.

The boots I was using are pretty neat. As far as I'm aware they're a New Zealand made workboot for dairy farmers, but it boils down to a half-shin length rubber gumboot with laces so that the boot can provide some support. They're not the super fancy-pants Goretex mountain boots I bought myself for the trip, but in many ways they're better suited to the terrain here.

That is, as long as you can keep the waterline below the boot line. Unfortunately falling knee deep into a landlocked ocean is not in compliance with this requirement. So - status update - I've got a boot full of water, a pack full of gear, and a full day of off-track trekking ahead of me. What's the plan? Find some (comparatively) dry ground, empty the boot, put a dry sock on and push onwards of course! Which leads us neatly into the third and final part of my Macquarie Island Society adventure (MISadventure) (get it?) trifecta.

Buzzy's.

Buzzy's are a bit like the bogeyman for incoming expeditioners. Over and over again you'll hear about them from experienced travellers who were leaving the island. "Oh, the buzzy's will ruin that." "No, you can't do that because of the buzzy's." So, naturally, you ask some questions.

Through my carefully cultivated network of informers the best I was able to determine was that they're "like... some kind of prickle?".

And yeah, it basically is. But it's an endemic, prolific, sticky little bastard that will hook its seed balls into anything (even plastic outer layer) and then spread throughout your gear, until everything you touch is a spiky ball of discomfort. Buzzy's in your gloves, jacket, hat, hair, boots, pack, thermals, socks, spare socks, and the socks still in the drawer at home.

Of course, these are all things that I learned moments after deciding "hey this nice firm high bit of ground looks perfect for taking my pack and shoes off". It didn't take long for me to realise that I had made an error in judgement, and I attempted to minimise the damage by keeping all my things stacked on my pack... but some mistakes can't be unmade, and I spent the rest of the walk having these lessons reinforced by the jabbing of a million tiny needles.

The show must go on though, and on I kept going, down the Aurora Cave Track towards the Flat Creek Jump Up, where we would break off trail and work through navigation exercises to meet up with our Ranger in Charge down island. This was an important opportunity for the Field Training Officer and Ranger in Charge; they were able to demonstrate that off-track doesn't lead to forbidden vistas and towering peaks, but to long slogs of endless featherbed and undulating buzzy fields.

"And if you turn left here, life will be more difficult."

Our accommodation for the evening was at Brother's Point, about equal latitude to Bauer Bay but the other side of the island. The hut is a "Googie" or "Smartie" hut, an exotic design that I've only ever seen used by the AAD. It's one of the two little flying saucers we have at Macca, but is pretty similar to the Googie I stayed in on Bechervaise Island at Mawson.

Home away from home away from home, and a welcome opportunity for a warm drink.

We were pretty knackered after a long day of hiking, and settled in to playing hut games before crashing out at Macca Midnight (9pm).

Dawn broke to our perfect weather turning a touch windy, and with forecasts of deteriorating conditions through the day. Eager to avoid exfoliation via sand to the face, we fixed station firmly in our sights and started north along the east coast. Along the way we paused for a morning rendezvous with our old friend RIC to discuss the tourism at Sandy Bay, to pay homage to the local colonies of King and Royal penguins. Most of the rest of the trek home was across beach boulders with short stints of inland go-arounds through tussock and bog. And then, before we knew it, North Head and station were in sight, and we were back home. Eager for a shower, a nap, and another chance to get off station.​

This is much more familiar terrain for me.

Sandy Bay Kings. I'm anticipating spending quite some time here.

Don't judge too harshly, I'm still learning how to drive the GPS.

Fin.