Recent content by AntarcticPilot

And expand! It's incredibly difficult to judge distance in the Polar regions. There are no familiar objects like trees to give scale, and the air is very clear when it's not full of snow! Invariably you underestimate distances, and what looks like a mile turns out to be 5!

That sounds like a blockage in the fuel system.

But be VERY careful to keep your hands or any other bare skin away from the spray pattern. The diesel is expelled at a speed that will penetrate the skin resulting in permanent sensitization to diesel and nasty dermatitis.

Of course, in the Arctic, wood that is above the strand line is effectively freeze-dried.

In the polar regions, long distance visibility is not uncommon - refraction caused by cold air at ground level substantially extends the distance you can see over, without requiring an elevated viewpoint such as that @FairweatherDave mentions in post 4. It is not unusual to be able to see the...

When on geology field work in Svalbard, many moons ago (1972), we used logs from the sea shore in the iron stoves that equipped cabins used by hunters and as refuges. These were plentiful, even in the inner reaches of fjords. Svalbard has NO trees except for dwarf willow or beech, which is just...

I'm afraid I don't know. The seas in that part of the world are not much frequented! I'd imagine there would be, though, because there are not only the strong westerly winds but also the Antarctic Circumpolar current, which flows in the same direction. Intuitively one would imagine that...

You get nice vortices downwind of the South Sandwich Islands too.

They shouldn't leak, but they could. What if the valve gets knocked? After all, they shouldn't leak with a regulator attached either. Of course different types of cylinder have different sealing arrangements, but they can all either accidentally be opened (e.g. the valve on Calor type bottled)...

All the options mentioned (except methanol) are ethanol, the stuff in your drink that makes you happy! The nasty smell is from impurities added to make it unpleasant to drink. So it's a question of finding a version where the additives don't give a bad smell. All I can suggest is to shop...

The problem is that the shelf life of such cartridges must be short - hydrogen and helium leak through almost anything, even when liquefied. They'd probably need replacing annually, if not more often. Helium will leak less but is a non-renewable resource, and of course hydrogen is dangerously...

But most of us use the free service, which (I think) uses only amateur stations. I may be wrong, but we certainly don't have access to the satellite data. That requires a fairly hefty subscription, which a commercial organisation can easily manage, but which is expensive for a private person...

The problem arises because Marine Traffic not only tracks real AIS transponders but also tracks imaginary ones where a user of the app enters details and Marine Traffic tracks their phone. When your real AIS is transmitting, it takes priority, but I'm pretty sure that the ones you see when not...

In 2018, East Anglia Sea School charged £295 for a day's own boat tuition. I thought that good value.

As when I started, GIS wasn't a thing and I had to devise programs to plot maps and do post-fix navigation for aircraft surveys using a variety of techniques, I perhaps should have emphasized the "geographic" part of my expertise! My degree is Geology; I got involved with what is now called GIS...