Because it has remained clear, calm and warm enough for equipment the station has been a huge flurry of vehicle activity.
The skiway needs to be groomed for the flights that are scheduled to come in six days. This means doing lots of dragging the 'land plane' (see above) and the 'drag' which also flattens things out nicely.
It takes 40 minutes to do one pass along the length of the two mile long skiway and this has to be done many, many, many times to maintain a nice flat stretch of ice. Plus when the winds pick up you are forever fighting a losing battle with the drifts that form. Fortunately I wasn't asked to do the monotonous skiway passes... I'm far more comfortable in the smaller equipment anyways.
The job I have is pulling the skiway marker bamboo sticks out of the ground to make them regulation high before we put the skiway marker flags on them. This involves hopping out of the cab, wrapping the chain around the stake, getting back in the cab, pulling the stake up to 4 feet and disconnecting the chain and moving to the next one.
It is very slow work and many of the sticks are too far buried in the ice and just break when you try to pull them out. We are trying to figure out a new solution to the problem because we did less then a quarter of the entire skiway in 4 hours yesterday and broke probably 1/4 of the ones we did try. There are ~606 skiway stakes to pull up to regulation height.....
It was a beautiful day to be out and about though.
Different angle of the station that you don't normally see because there really isn't a reason to be here unless you are working on the skiway or leaving on a flight.
First sundog of the 2015-16 summer season!
Very tedious -- you should look at a post extractor or tree pulling attachment that works at ground level and completely from the cab. If it had a small vibrator on it like they use for pulling sheet piling, so much the better. Search "skid steer fence post puller" and you will get plenty of ideas.
ReplyDeleteI agree, incredibly tedious. I looked up the skid steer fence post pullers but they all look like the jaws would crush the bamboo poles. They are frustratingly fragile. We have changed tactics to chain + rope which is much slower but has a much higher success rate. What we really need is a Chinese finger trap kind of contraption.
DeleteYou would probably have to engineer and fabricate a simple custom adapter. I envision two half cylinders on pivots, lined with some silicone rubber or something that still has some ability to be compressed at -40 degrees.
DeleteDrive up to the stake, squeeze the cylinder around it, and ease it up to the proper height. Bamboo is quite strong in compression as I recall.
Yep, we had a few idea of things we could fabricate but no time to make it right or the materials really. We don't pull flags often enough for anyone to put in for someone to make it.
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