With bad weather prevalent in the southern work areas, the first flight of the season from Adelaide, established Jim Roberts (outgoing B.C, Adelaide) and Clive Jackman (Met), to provide comparative meteorology observations with Adelaide, and as support for VP-FAP and VP-FAQ to land there if and as necessary.
Field parties were flown out of Adelaide and upon completion of the summer, several dog teams were culled in the field, in compliance with BAS Director Laws’s mandate of reducing dog team capability in favor of skidoos.
Adelaide’s notoriety for bad weather for flight operations when everywhere else was clear was ongoing. In January, relief at Adelaide was fraught with difficulties – see here, and both official (Met Obs) and unofficial comparisons were being made between Adelaide and Rothera.
(Dr. Charles Swithinbank, Head of BAS Glaciology, visited Rothera in January of 1975. In his book “Forty Years on Ice”, he wrote:
” For some years now, the aircraft skiway had been deteriorating and now it was quite bumpy. Someone suggested that Rothera Point on the east side of Adelaide could be a possible site for a future hard (bare-ground) runway, so I asked Bransfield to take us there. The approaches to the point were uncharted, so the ship stayed well-clear while five of us went ashore in an inflatable boat. The whole area consisted of raised beach cobbles and gravel, and it was remarkably level. There was only one possible alignment for a runway and we marked it out with a few small rock cairns. At one end there was a hazard from grounded icebergs but we felt the pilots could live with that. Luckily Alan Smith, the man responsible for all BAS building projects, had come ashore with us. Big Al, as he was known, now set to work with a spade to see whether the beach material had solid foundations. Together we concluded that most of the necessary levelling could be done with a bulldozer. It was certainly the best potential runway site that any of us had seen in this part of the country.”) Dr. Swithinbank’s Notes discussed the runway project: Read
Actually, rather than luckily, Big Al and John Newman from BAS HQ Logistics were there to be integral in the investigation of Rothera, as planned during the summer meetings in Cambridge.
Giles Kershaw, pilot, produced a very detailed and technical report on operations as they would likely be at Rothera, the Twin Otters being STOL aircraft : “A Guide to the Max. STOL performance from a sea level airstrip”, providing calculated results “which may be obtained in practice under ideal conditions by an experienced pilot on a hard, dry, level airstrip“. Pilot Bert Conchie agreed fully with the Report.
The meteorologists at both Adelaide and Rothera produced a Report comparing the weather at the two bases. Effectively, in all respects – Wind Speed, Mean Wind, Temperatures, Cloud cover and levels, Precipitation, Visibility, Swell and Ice on the Jetty, Rothera came out either equal to or generally, for air operations, better than Adelaide.
Graham Tourney, Surveyor with Jon Walton, both heading out from Fossil Bluff, carried out a survey of Rothera Point with a view to the construction of an airstrip, and a detailed 1:1000 map of the whole point was drawn up. Graham noted that during the period of the survey, aircraft operations would have been possible 16 of the 17 days. Again, the swells of “less than one foot” were noted.
At Adelaide, in the same period, Meteorologist Clive Jackman’s report showed that visibility was generally poor, mainly 7/8 cover below 3,000 feet, with precipitation occurring on both days.
The final Report concluded that:
– STOL operations would be feasible if a hard strip was to be constructed
– An excellent alternate skiway existed on the Piedmont to be used in case of crosswinds on the point, loads of above maximum all-up weights!, and on days of low stratus at the Base
– The weather was generally better at Rothera, based on the observations, but also borne out by the pilots returning into Adelaide in marginal to poor weather when they could see Rothera had much better weather
– The unloading situation compared to Adelaide would be an infinitely superior situation at Rothera
– The pilots are satisfied with the suitability of a prepared strip at Rothera with regards to approach, particularly in bad weather, whereas they are unhappy with the approach to the skiway in bad weather
It was clear by the end of the summer, with
– The deteriorating skiway at Adelaide
– The dangerous unloading conditions at Adelaide jetty with increasing amounts of aircraft fuel incoming
– ‘Swells’ at Rothera being “mostly no more than a foot”
– The weather as seen by the pilots, routinely being clear at Rothera when Adelaide was ‘manked in’
that BAS needed to set up its operations to be at Rothera for future years, and eventually close Base T.
Steve Wormald Adelaide – Met, 1969, Stonington – GA – 1970, BC/GA – 1973, Rothera – Ops. Manager 1974-1977