AIDJEX Bulletin #40 - Polar Science Center - University of Washington

of ships-of-opportunity, the primary method of deployment. There are few
enough ships south of the Antarctic convergence in the summer, and virtually
none in the winter. The emphasis on contributions of ship time from participating
countries to deploy buoys, rather than pushing for equivalent
contributions of aircraft time, reflects the strong ship-based oceanographic
background of most persons involved in data buoy developments. This has
placed unnecessary restrictions on the strategies for data buoy deployments
in FGGE.
Aircraft deployment is essentially the only choice available in the
Arctic Ocean, and has been in use for more than 20 years. Parachute deployment
of buoys has been an important recent development, with about 50 buoys
deployed without a failure in the past two years. Several successful tests
of parachute deployment of drifting buoys have been made into open water,
including the successful operation of thermistor strings and barometric pressure
sensors after such drops. Both open ocean spar buoyand buoys that sit
on top of the ice have worked for as much as a full year. Controlled tests
of the ice-sitting version have shown pressure measurements better than 0.3
mb and daily average temperature measurements within l0C over a four-month
period. Parachute deployment of buoys has been shown to be a practical technique.
The Antarctic continent, and the area covered by sea ice that surrounds
it, is the most difficult place on the globe to fly to in the winter. Most
of the continent, and the entire ocean area surrounding it, can be reached
from four major southern hemisphere cities using an aircraft with 4500 km
(2700 n. mi.) operating radius (Fig. 3). With a standard fuel load, the
C-141 Starlifter, a jet cargo aircraft, can operate at this radius with a
650 km (400 n. mi.) reserve. The C-130 Hercules, a turboprop cargo plane in
commercial and government service throughout the world, can operate to a
radius of 3000 km (1800 n. mi.) with a 500 km (33 n. mi.) reserve. Operating
from a smaller airstrip at the tip of South America, a C-130 could reach the
same locations near Antarctica as a C-141 flying from Buenos Aires. Similarly,
there are other areas throughout the world where smaller aircraft can be used,
sometimes out of more remote airstrips, to deploy data buoys where and when
they are needed.
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