Location: Halley Research Station - Virtual Trip to Antarctica
Location: Halley Research Station
If you have arrived at Halley by ship, you will travel up to the station on a Sno-cat or a trailer. The distance to the base will depend on where the ship has moored as it does not always moor in the same place. If however you have arrived by aircraft, you will land on a snow / ice runway which is kept groomed by the staff at the station. The approach to Halley in an aircraft must be sure to avoid the Clean Air Sector, where special experiments are being undertaken in the sterile atmosphere. The experiments don't want to be jeopardised by contaminating the air with aircraft exhaust emmissions.
Halley is approximately 8 hours flying time from Rothera, often the aircraft fly via Fossil Bluff or Sky-Blu. From the air the station seems a tiny scattering of buildings and structures compared to the surrounding expanse of ice. Whichever way you have arrived at Halley, the chances are you will be involved in the relief (resupply) of the station once the ship arrives. Once the ship is tied up, a core crew of crane drivers, mechanics, and drivers will be moved off the ship and put up on base. These shifts of people will work opposite a night shift, operating 24hrs a day until the ship is unloaded. This takes about 7 days, depending upon cargo and weather.
Once relief is finished, all the summer crew will be put in the summer accommodation building ( Drewry ) and will work at the Summer Building Engineers direction over the summer period. The winterers will move off up to the main platform and settle in with the remaining crew they are to winter with. After half a day to settle in, work will begin in earnest - six days on and Sundays off. If the weather turns bad, summer staff may be laid up for a day or two. To keep on schedule, this means extra work at the weekends! Platform work inside will continue regardless, and most summer staff are allocated work elsewhere during adverse weather. Sundays are a time for igloo building, softball games, barbeques etc. After the bulk of the season's work has been completed, the ship will return for last call, to offload more cargo and load up waste, while the base is tidied up and left for winter.
Halley V consists of three single story accommodation buildings providing work and living quarters for 20 people. Each is on a raised jackable steel platform 5 m off the snow surface. The building has triple glazed windows and a flat roof. The underside of the structure is shaped to allow the prevailing wind to pass without restriction, minimising any drift formation about the base.
The accommodation building is by far the largest building. It measures 58.6 m long and 14.6 m wide, and consists of three sections that were raised into place during the build. The first section is the sleeping area, the second is the living area - comprising, kitchen, lounge, computer room, offices and library. The third is the services area, which houses the generators, workshops, food stores and laundry. These three sections are connected by a central corridor extending through the whole length of the building.
When entering the building at the main entrance from the open platform, the generator and service rooms are to the left. They are all containerised, including the laundry / drying room. On the right side after the boot room are the workshops and freezer stores. After passing the laundry, the dry food stores are on the left, and the dining room on the right. This is usually the first room you get to after coming up from the ship. After this, the gym is on the right hand side as you walk up, next along is the computer rooms / email facility. The Base Commander lives next to this in his office. On the left side after the food store, the first door goes to the lounge and bar, and the next into the main ablutions and shower areas. You will note that the bar area has a radio handset hanging at eye level. This is for when the base challenges another base to a game of darts during the winter! The small cast iron stove in the corner was rescued from Husvik in the early nineties and restored as a mid-winter project. The accommodation area is at the far end of the platform from the engines, and is kept as quiet as possible by a large soundproof door at the start of this area. The surgery is just through this door to the left.
