The Worlds most Traveled Amplifier
 
When you arrive in Antarctica, weather becomes more than something you watch on television each night. It is all around you, and hits you in the face every time you leave your shelter, or feel like that shelter might blow away in the wind that is trying to rip it from its' anchors. On the the 3YØX DXpedtion to Peter the First Island in 2006, there were several tie-ins to the weather, including one with an Alpha amplifier that may rate as the strangest transaction on a DXpedtion!
 
Antarctica has been called "the weather factory of the world". It is the highest, driest, continent, and contains the bulk of the fresh water on the planet in frozen form. It is surrounded by the immense Southern Ocean, and the winds that circulate around the continent control the weather in all of earth's southern hemisphere, and influences the rest of the world as well. Knowledge of weather conditions in and around Antarctica are of critical importance for forecasting and for climate monitoring. Satellites can remotely sense a lot of critical data, but there is still a need for as much "ground truth" as possible. There are now many more weather stations, both automatic and attended, in Antarctica than there once were. However, when we went to Peter 1, there was no functioning weather station there. One had been placed many years ago, but had ceased to function, leaving the entire Bellingshausen Sea without a permanent weather station. We were asked to make weather observations while we there, and we took along the necessary equipment for this.
 
In fact, we took along two weather stations- one low tech:
 
and the other one a little more in the high tech vein:
 
 
This small met station recorded the data on a PC, and it could be passed back via the Iridium satellite phones we had with us.
 
The weather was the critical factor in tactical planning throughout our stay on the island. It determined when the helicopter could fly, when we could set up (we needed a break of a couple of days) and when we would start to break the camp down. As a backup, Molly, WØMOM had got in touch with an old friend of hers from NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) here in Boulder. He had access to the latest satellite-based predictions for the Antarctic, and he would pass a summary of the likely weather for the next few days to Molly. She would then pass it on to me via the Iridium satellite phone. These predictions proved to be remarkably accurate in their broad outline (low pressure system will arrive tomorrow for example).
 

 
In fact, we were hoping to extend operations for another couple of days, but one of these NOAA forecasts convinced us to start packing up right away, a process that was going to take several days. After this decision was made I was working a shift on 15m SSB. There was a weak opening to Europe, signals were all around S-5 to S-8. Suddenly I heard a 20-over-9 call "3YØX this is DL5XL", that nearly knocked me out of my chair "DL5XL, now THAT'S a signal" I replied. It turned out that this was Felix, operating /MM from the German research vessel "MV Polarstern", about 20 miles, not thousands of miles away! Felix wanted to know if he could get the GPS coordinates of our camp, as they were going to land by helicopter the next day. It turned out he had got the right operator- I was right next to the EME station, which had a GPS receiver for accurate timing for the WSJT digital modes we were using, and so I could pass the coordinates on immediately.
 
It transpired that Polarstern was on a research cruise in the area, and that she was going to be deploying an automatic weather station for the University of Wisconsin on the same glacier on which we were camped. Felix was the electronics officer on the ship and took advantage of ham radio to get an important piece of information for the helicopter pilot.
 
Next day the team and equipment were ferried onto the glacier by helicopter, and Felix was on one of the trips, as he had some installation work to attend to on the weather station. After his work was done he had a few free hours- and a major DXpedition was going on just a few hundred yards away.... To cut a long story short, it wasn't long before Felix was at an operating position, facing the "wall of sound" and having the time of his life.
 
Meanwhile, in preparation for our departure, we had broken down a couple of the stations and were boxing them up. Each position had a special Alpha 99 amplifier. I was putting one into its transportation box, when Felix came out of the operating tent grinning like the cat that stole the cream. He had enjoyed himself, and I was chatting to him about the equipment. He told me that he was currently re-doing his station in Germany, and that he definitely wanted an Alpha amp in it. I thought for a second and said "How about this one?". After determining that I wasn't a) insane or b) been on the ice too long, we started talking. I made a quick Iridium call to Molly, and a minute or two later we shook hands on the first amplifier (or any other) sale on Peter I Island!
 
It turned out that the box the weather station came in was just the right size for the 99, and it was currently unoccupied.... So the amplifier arrived from Chile on one ship, was ferried to the island by one helicopter, left on a second helicopter and went to Germany on a second ship. The worlds most traveled amplifier?
 
We asked Erling, LA6VM, our sole Norwegian on the team whether we needed to pay sales tax, since this was a Norwegian Island. He was keen to exact some, but in the end settled for a beer when we got back to Punta Arenas!
 
The only hang-up was that I could not immediately locate a manual. But I knew where one was, back on our ship, the DAP Mares. Since the Polarstern was going to be passing the island a few weeks later on their way back home, and they were going to fly a helicopter up to the weather station for a last check, I knew what to do. When I got to the ship, I double-bagged the manual, wrote "Give to Felix" on the outside in big letters, and gave it, along with a role of tape, to the last of our helicopter crews to go to the island. They taped on the tower, and indeed, a few weeks later the manual was picked up and passed to Felix.
 
Thus ended successfully the tale of the amplifier sale on Peter I Island. As a final note, the University of Wisconsin weather station is still in operation, reporting data back via the Argos satellite.