South Pole Comms

800 miles due south (as the skua flies) is Amundsen-Scott
South Pole Station. Or "The Pole" as most of us at McMurdo
call it. From now until late August, I'll be speaking to
Shaun at the Station Operations Center (this pictured
room)once a week to basically verify that the South Pole
Station is still...I guess for a better term...there. I
don't think anyone's going to walk away with it or aliens
will scoop it up in the middle of the night, but for one
hour each week I will be contacting Shaun, who will be in
this small room and we'll be testing our HF radio systems.
Exciting stuff? Not so much, but since I find it rather
doubtful that I will ever winter at the Pole, this is about
as close as I can get. There are thousands of Ham Radio
operators around the world that would probably give almost
anything to speak to either one of us during the winter and
we're getting paid to do it. Hopefully there will be some good
stories coming out of this room at Pole this winter instead
of...yep, it's still cold...yep, it's still dark. I have
enough of the still cold and still dark stuff on this
end of the radio.