Just a quick one

Hello all,

Sorry for the radio silence. Unfortunately, it must continue, as I am probably off in the morning to Sky-Blu.

I'm sitting at Rothera writing this. The plane came into Halley pretty much on schedule. It then went out to investigate a mysterious American package - actually, it was just a weather balloon, but we pretended it was something sinister - and then took me over to Rothera.

Fairly uneventful trip, right up to the end. Then, at Rothera, we had a 20 knot gusting crosswind. I had the ever-entertaining Steve King as my pilot, and he gave me last minute instructions as we landed: "If I shout 'ailerons', swing the steering wheel as hard as you can to the right. That will minimize our chances of flipping over." I stood ready; he shouted; I swung. And we landed as neat as could be. He turned to me and said "Were you scared?" And I replied: "No...should I have been?"

He just chuckled. So I don't know if we cheated death or just did another boring routine landing. In the arsenal of Steve's flight stories, though, this one definitely wasn't worth remembering, even if it was high risk. (I don't think it was.)

So it's just like last year - I'll go down to Sky-Blu and wait for a weather window to do pretty much the same thing I did last year. The same thing I do every year, no matter where I go - raise GPS stations. What I was apparently put on this planet to do.

I was planning on providing a map and explaining where I'm going in the next month; but alas, I must get to bed before going (hopefully) first thing in the morning.

So I shall do so when I get back. A bientot!