KC4AAD 1982 Antarctica
I was a radio comm-tech at Siple
Station in 1976-1977 (at age 19).
On Thanksgiving Day (1976), only myself and the Chief Scientist
were in the main station. Everyone else, about 46 men, were at
Summer Camp (about 1/4 mile away). I was on watch in the Radio
Room for flight-following on HF when the AC power degraded
significantly. My gear was going down. I immediately went across
the passageway to enter the generator room to check the AC
voltmeter. That's when I saw the fire. The entire gen-shack was
engulfed in flames. It was horrendous. I grabbed a nearby
fire-extinguisher and put the fire out. It was a broken fuel line
feeding the intake manifold on a Cat generator which I was able
to secure. Because the local UHF comm's to Summer Camp were down,
due to the blackout, I could not reach any others for help. The
Chief Scientist had gone for help on foot, but I was on my own,
in the dark, with zero communications capability, and nowhere to
run. The entire station was at risk of burning to bits, along
with the experimental facility. Our crew would have been at grave
risk, trying to survive at Summer Camp on limited resources,
before rescue flights could arrive to help, which we could not
call. I got a little pat on the back for my heroics, but I wanted
somebody to know how close we came to losing Siple Station
Antarctica (KC4AAD) on that fateful day. It was an experience
beyond imagination, and I wonder if anybody ever told Dr.
Katsufrakis (Stanford Univ), before he passed-away.
Just another "sea-story" from the briney white ice of
Antarctica.
73, Steve - KW6M
Wow! Great story! Tnx for
sharing that with me. Its a good thing you thought quick enough
to get the fire out! I added it to 3 out of the 5 KC4AAD QSL's I
have on my site. The other two KC4AAD cards don't mention Siple
Station, they say Byrd Aurora (VLF) Sub-station. Is that the same
place as Siple Station?
73, Tom K8CX
Hi Tom, and thanks. It's great
to hear from you. Yes indeed, we were at 76-South 84-West, but I
had never heard it called "Byrd" before. There was a
Byrd station, very tiny, located about 400 miles west-northwest
of Siple. We were up on 5,000' of snow that never melts, and it
snows ~60 feet / year. Since it snows a lot there, the entire
station gets crushed, and a new one has to be rebuilt about every
2 years. They also have to raise the whole dipole every summer so
it doesn't get buried. I'm quite certain the station has been
de-commissioned, but remnants may still remain under the snow.
The 13-mile long VLF dipole was extended to 19-miles during my
stay. It was on 3.5kHz RF @ 100kW modulating the magnetic
line-of-force to Roberval, Canada. When they turn it on, you can
hear it in your head (!), and don't even bother to try the movie
projector. It was RFI central.... The experiment was conducted to
explore the possibility of one-way communications to submarines
underneath the Arctic ice-cap. We were astonished to realize that
our signal was ~+20db stronger than the projected calculation,
and was attributed to "free electrons in outer space,
getting along for the ride" (!). Sorry to say, but all of my
Siple memorabilia was lost in a house-fire in 1998, so only
memories remain. Thanks for posting those QSL cards. We sent out
a lot of these.: Some SWL guys heard us on 8997 kHz USB working
the aircraft, and sent us cards. There were 3 radio-men, working
8-hour shifts. I spent a lot of my off-time on 20 meters running
patches for the crew We had a KWM-2 (barefoot) on a horizontal
V-beam 800' per leg pointed at CONUS. The main HF comm-gear was
all Collins, running 1kW to 3 other V-beams pointed at South
Pole, McMurdo, and New Zealand One time, while enroute to Siple
on a C-130, the pilot invited me to the cockpit to run patches
for his crew. That was really fun, until we got near Siple, where
the weather was absolutely horrific. The pilot couldn't see the
ski-way and wanted to divert to South Pole. I was really excited
about that...but the co-pilot said "I'll put this sucker
down!" And he did...but it was a crash landing, and we broke
the front ski off the Herc. I heard it cost ~$1 million to make
that repair. ...and so it goes...
73, Steve - KW6M
QSL from the estate of W6HVW
Info courtesy of KW6M