Today the drillers made their first attempts at recovering the fiber glass pieces in the casing to give us access to the deeper part of the GRIP bore hole. This was, however, a frustrating experience, as the recovery attempts had the opposite effect of what we wanted. Travelling up and down the damaged broke off more fiber glass pieces, and none were recovered (see report below). So, we have a problem at hand that demands a different approach. On the surface, work continued on our new storage trench, as well as our power cable duct to the food weatherport. As we had some snow fall, Thomas groomed the skiway and load pad in the late afternoon and evening. Assisted by Charlotte, Bo made a further motion detection radar test, confirming the observation from EGRIP, that our doppler radar cannot detect the motion of a crawling person some 2.2km from camp, while it works fine to do so 1.5km from camp. A walking person can still easily be detected at 2.2km. In the dome Anders again did his magic for lunch and dinner, even making the classic Danish dessert “Rød grød med fløde” for all of us!
What we did this Thursday:
- Groomed central part of skiway as well as apron load pad.
- Prepared AF pallet for retro cargo
- Organized cargo.
- Attempted to recover glass fiber pieces from casing.
- Used gopro camera in bore hole for inspection between recovery attempts.
- Assembled the 2.2m drill and managed to get it into top of casing.
- Continued work on storage trench.
- Continued work on cable duct to food Weatherport.
Re 4-6: Drillers’ report:
Tested and adjusted the AT section for the casing diameter. Attempted multiple trash collecting runs with the “corkscrew” reaching a depth of 49m and then 51m. The final return with the corkscrew resulted in a peak load of 800kg and a damaged AT blade. 2 large pieces of fiberglass are now lodged in the casing near the seam at 50m. The whole 2.2m drill was assembled and passed into the top of the casing – it fits, but there is a strong angle of 5 degrees and a lot of drill rubbing. Caution will be required.
Weather: Cloudy all day with slight snow in the night and increasing winds during the day. Temp. from -15C to -12C. Wind 2-14kts, turning from NW to E during the day.
FL, Bo Vinther
