Another Day at the Office
We've actually camped in the same site for two nights in a row now, although you'll be glad to hear we haven't spent the entire 24 hours in
bed.
Today was taken up with equipment testing, crevasse drills, photography, and a sledge-less round trip to a nearby glacier to hone our langlauf technique. The weather, once again, was beautiful and once we'd warmed up, we skied with bare hands, earbands and sunglasses. Glorious.
Marc asked yesterday about how we're powering the gizmos necessary to beam these updates back to you – namely an Iridium satellite phone and an HP iPAQ (or PDA – a palm-top computer, about the size of a Kitkat (classic, not chunky!). I'm equally excited and proud to say that we're using nothing more than solar power, and I'm going to hand over to Tony to talk you through it…
When we are out on an expedition with a blogging element, Ben and I need to power a GPS, Iridium phone, PDA, digital camera and video camera as well as a pair of MP3 players when the only thing getting you up that hill is a quick blast of 'St. Elmo's Fire'.
While we've chosen/jury-rigged systems that run on a similar format (the trusty AA battery), there is still a question over how you charge the batteries themselves. One simple solution has been to take lots of lithium batteries; they are lighter than normal batteries and are extremely good in the cold. However, if you are on the ice for a significant period of time the weight starts to build up (bear in mind we cut the labels out of our thermals to save weight).
The other more rare option (particularly in Antarctica) has been to use rechargeable batteries, with some kind of solar panel. The main problem with these in the past has been the weight of the accompanying battery pack. Recent expeditions have been lugging around batteries weighing ten pounds or more, which begs the question why bother.
On this expedition we wanted to try out a fairly new flexible solar panel system from Iowa Thin Film (see pic) that has double the ampage of more common panel systems. The result? We have been plugging the electrics straight into the panel and haven't used a battery yet. We are both really excited about the possibilities for expanding what we can do online with the extra power. Now if we can only find a way to get free phone calls. . .
— Filed under Greenland