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Omega Livingston expedition gets out of Puntas
18:06 p.m. EST Nov 28, 2003
Damien wrote into ExplorersWeb that he managed to get out of Puntas Arenas this past Tuesday and is on King George Island, off the coast of Antarctica. Damien (independent from HumanEdgeTech) reports bad satellite connection and is unable to send pictures at the moment. This specific problem has affected expeditions using both Thuraya, Iridium and Globalstar in the past weeks. Human Edge Tech is currently trying to pinpoint the problem.
Unlike most of the other teams awaiting their flight to Antarctica with ANI, The Omega team is flying with DAP, who got them to King George Island in a Dash-7 plane. This is more akin to the Twin Otter that is shown on the left rather than the huge Ilyushin that the other expeditions are waiting to fly.
Damien's latest update:
"Finally flew out of Punta on Tuesday, on DAP's new Dash-7 plane, landing at King George Island in the afternoon. Put all our stuff in the hut that DAP use here, and then had dinner with the Russians at Bellingshausen station. Wednesday the weather was no good, but the DAP aircrew, Marcelo and Pedro, did a short test flight of the chopper, which is kept in a hangar here on the Russian base.
John took Osvaldo on a short ski tour, Rodrigo did some photography and Damo helped put the chopper away (it's dragged back in to the hangar with an old Lada Niva car !). Thursday the weather has been quite bad, 36 knot winds outside the hut and thick clouds all around.
A Chilean C-130 arrived today, bringing in a new pilot for our chopper - Marcelo has been here over two weeks. We had lunch with the Russians again and did a bit more skiing around the island. Hoping for an improvement in the weather to fly on Friday ! The satphone connection is really patchy right here, and I currently can't send attached images. Hopefully will improve in a few days."
On the expedition this year will be Damien Gildea, 34, of Australia, Chilean Rodrigo Fica, 36, an Australian GIS specialist John Bath, 33, and a Chilean student, Osvaldo Usaj. The aim this year is to first ascend Mount Friesland on Livingston Island and record it’s proper height by means of a GPS.
The information collected by the Omega expedition will be combined with previous maps and research to make a more accurate map of the area that will be available sometime in 2004.
ExplorersWeb archive image of a Twin Otter - a similar looking plane to the Dash 7 used for Antarctic transport as well. They are both considered STOL aircraft, which stands for Short Take OFF and Landing.
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