Diesel Generators Keep Scott Base Alive

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29984, 20 November 1962, Page 10

Diesel Generators Keep Scott Base Alive

(81/

GRAHAM BILLING.

. N.Z. Antarctic Research

toy Dijuijiau, Programme Information Officer]

“If only the noise would stop”—but it will not stop because it is keeping you alive.

That noise means warmth. It means you ca<n keep breathing while you sleep. It means you can live in Scott Base. Antarctica. It is the constant noise of 50 whirring fans, 18 oil heaters, of air rushing from one space into another.

The biggest noise comes from two great green generator engines with shiny copper pipes traversing their sides. They run for days, months, years sharing the task of keeping 40-odd New Zealanders alive in Antarctica each summer and 13 alive for the seven-month Antarctic night. These are the men of the New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme which is organised each year by the An'tarctic Division of the D.SI.R. Above the drone of fans and heaters, doors bang and

telephones ring. For Scott Base is a collection of insideout refrigerators connected by iron tunnels. Each of the nine 'refrigerator” huts has two heavy insulated doors, a heater and a telephone. The two main generating engines provide Scott Base with electriciity for heating, air circulation. cooking, communications, lighting and the operation of scientific instruments which are the reason for the existence of the base. Should both main engines fail, two smaller auxiliary engines wait to take over the load. If the change over is quick no harm is done for thick insulated hut walls keep out Antarctic cold. But each power failure means a break in scientific recording for instruments are timed by electric clock to automatically record changes in the physical world around the base—earthquakes or aurora for instance.

The main engines do not often step. Their diesel chug can be heard for miles around the base on a still day. Each produces 65 horse-

power to drive a 40kva generator. Turn by turn they run their 500 hours so that when one is working the other can be maintained. To mess room and galley, sleeping huts, science laboratory. sledge room and carpenters’ shop, photo dark room and garage they pour out life constantly. They enable Scott Base men to telephone friends and families in New Zealand by radio, to have a bath once in 10 days (water is rationed), and mend their clothes on a sewing machine. If the generators stopped, the base would be pleasantly silent. But there would be no heat to melt snow, the only source of water. Sewage, discharged through heated pipes, would freeze. Most food stocks are frozen. They could not be thawed.

Sleeping huts would grow cold as the air outside —30 degrees of frost at midday in November. Without electric pumps to fill them fuel tanks would empty.

As long as the noise continues Scott Base is comfortable—even though the scream of blizzard winds drowns the whir of fans. A visit to the main engine-room is reassuring. The green engine throbs with life.

Perhaps the base maintenance engineer, L. Glogoski, of Auckland, is polishing the copper work while the electrician, W. Doull. of Dunedin, stands carefully watching the generator- control panels. L. Loudon, the Australian mechanic, may be working on the stand-by engine. Even New Zealand field survey parties hundreds of miles away in the mountains of the Ross Dependency depend on their work. Electricity means radio contact is possible and a field party’s requests for new stores or urgently needed equipment can be answered quickly. And each day the working engine consumes 90 gallons of kerosene fuel which has to be brought in drums from the nearby base storage dump. Filling the fuel tanks is a day’s work for the base maintenance carpenter, W. Goss, of Wellington, and his assistant, B. Waters, of Christchurch. They have to use a tractor to haul heavy loads of fuel drums on a giant sledge. The job must be done in fine weather or snow blizzard. These five men are keeping 1 Scott Base alive. Without ' their skill and constant alert- ! ncss the base would freeze ! and stop.

Death in Car.—A man who was found dead in his car in the main street of Gore on Sunday has been identified as Aubrey MacKenzie. aged 53, single, of Invercargill. It is believed he had suffered a heart attack. —(P.A.)