There's potential at Pegasus

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Three runways' lives

USAP looking for alternate landing site

By Beth Minneci
Sun Staff

On the clearest days, from Scott Base one can spot a small speck south across the ice shelf. It's Pegasus Ice runway.

Runways are central to our lives.

We look to them for letters and packages from home and for fresh food to put on our plates. Runways are the turning point and a pit stop for people and cargo between McMurdo Station, the South Pole and field camps. They are like a vantage point - the platform from which we form our first and last impressions of Antarctica. To some of us, runways are a workplace and a second home.

Eighteen miles away, Pegasus is the farthest and least-used of McMurdo Station's three frozen airstrips.

Ice runway Pegasus Ice runway at Winfly. Photo courtesy of Bill Haals.

This year scientists are studying whether it is feasible to open Pegasus a month sooner, in December, when the sea ice runway is closed and the U.S. Antarctic Program consequently is forced to trim cargo and passenger loads.

Extending Pegasus' life just a few weeks would entail a lot of preparation but could provide a worthwhile return - up to 25 extra flights a season, said George Blaisdell, an engineer leading the Pegasus study.

"Consider the length of a season," Blaisdell said. "The program believes it's not too much effort to do this."

The goal is to make wheeled plane landings safe on Pegasus during December and January, two months in which the runway is closed, and when the sea ice runway - the main strip of the season - is dismantled.

By each December, the sun has usually damaged the sea ice surface to a degree that it is not worth maintaining anymore, so the program pulls the two dozen or so buildings that service the airfield to Williams Field, a snowy skiway seven miles away. Last Saturday, fleet operators finished the bulk of that move. The sea ice closed Wednesday.

The switch to Williams Field marks mid-summer, and a time when the program's cargo and passenger flights slow down. This happens because Williams Field is only able to handle aircraft with skis, and most skied planes are smaller than wheeled planes.

Pegasus, on the other hand, can handle the wheels during most months, and is being targeted to one day take over after the sea ice is closed.

To make a summer snow layer on Pegasus that will support wheeled landings, Blaisdell and crews have been packing with 50-ton roller machines several inches of snow. The experiment is taking place in December and January.

Packing snow may not sound scientific. But finding the formula for compaction that will support planes weighing up to 155,000 pounds with cargo is a delicate balance of, among other things, temperature and tire pressure on the snow. Yesterday a wheeled taxi test was scheduled with an LC-130. More flights are planned each week until late January.

Opening Pegasus immediately after the sea ice runway closes would not only boost cargo and passenger transportation between McMurdo and Christchurch, the ability to use wheeled planes would free up the program's ski planes for intra-continent use, said airfield manager Gary Cardullo.

"It's going to allow us to do more missions here on the continent," Cardullo said.


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