ITP63 Deployment Operations
On April 20, 2012, ten days after ITP 56 was deployed from the Russian ice camp Barneo, ITP 63 with the same deployment apparatus and some of the same deployment team were transported by MI-8 helicopter on a long cold 4+ hour flight west to the Russian NP-39 drifting ice station for deployment. Due to the far distance, auxiliary fuel tanks were installed in the helicopter and a second MI-8 accompanied with supplies for the NP ice station. In fact, to reduce the weight of the instrument package for load and fuel considerations, the tether on this particular ITP was only 510 m long rather than the typical 790 m.
Upon arrival at the NP ice station, the team picked up 2 helpers from NP-39, transferred to the MI-8 with the ITP apparatus for the deployment, and headed out on a short flight to a large floe approximately 5 km from the camp. Nearly 1 m of snow on the floe made surveying the floe and hauling gear around difficult, but a spot with ice 1.27 m thick was selected. After unloading everything, the helicopter returned to camp, so to handle the cold temperatures (-10 to -15 °C) a warm tent was set up next to the deployment site to keep the profiler and laptop computers warm.
The deployment proceeded smoothly, but was slowed by the cold so took about 4 hours to get the system deployed, and the profiler responding to the inductive modem test. Fifteen minutes later the MI-8 arrived on site, and the deployment team and apparatus were transported back to the ice station. After lunch and refueling of the helicopter, the team returned to Barneo on another 4+ hour flight, unloaded, and called it a long day.
