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Immediate report of Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition 1989-90: VUWAE 34

Radio Communications

Radio Communications

The comms team at Scott Base provided excellent support throughout the season. Special mention must also go to the Vanda team who tolerated our 2 am skeds.

On several occasions early in the season we were given weather information for the wrong area. This usually arose only when a stand-in operator was being used. They simply gave us the All Area Forecast for Ross Island and told us that it was for our area.

When comms were bad as they were from time to time we managed to communicate with Scott Base by CW, high-lighting that if the current radios are replaced that a CW capability should be retained.

Extreme care should be given to the use of True and Grid directions, especially when they are passed out by Scott Base. This applies to both Weather information and Navigational page 71 messages. We ran into this problem to the extent that we spent some days looking for flags in the wrong direction!

This gives rise to two points:
1)All directions be they related to weather or navigational instructions passed by Scott Base should be suffixed as their meaning.
2)The field manual should contain a map showing the grid used by the US.

The Tait hand helds worked well and we were able to Talk to Scott Base on CH 3 from Mt Crean and on CH 5 from Mt Fleming and Mt Bastion.

See comments on solar panels and radio boxes above