Polar-5 aircraft hanger (credits: K. Giles)

From Katharine (UCL) at Resolute Bay, northern Canada on 8 April

After taking a look around the Polar-5 aircraft hanger Rosie, Justin, Seymour, Christian and I headed off to the warehouse to work out how we were going to build the stands for the corner reflectors. Corner reflectors are pieces of metal that provide a known target for the radar that will be flying over them. They are vital for us to be able to relate what the radar in the aircraft sees to what is measured on the ground.

Preparations (credits: K. Giles)

After lunch, we jumped on some skidoos and headed off to the edge of the sea ice to go and practice how we were going to place the corner reflectors out on the ice. It was a beautifully sunny day around -30°C, perfect to get acclimatised. Our plan is to put two corner reflectors at each survey site separated by about 1 km and mark them with an orange or blue sheet of material and the same colour bin bags filled with snow so they are easy to spot from the air.

Corner reflector planning (credits: K. Giles)

We have to be careful when we place the corner reflectors out to disturb as little snow as possible as this could affect what the radar sees. The snow was pretty deep where we were walking and at one point Seymour ended up having to dig me out when my foot got stuck!

The rest of the day and evening was spent building the other corner reflector stands and then discussing what worked and didn’t work with setting them out. In general, we all thought it went pretty well and after a bit of discussion we finalised a protocol for it and headed off for a well-earned sleep after our 14-hour day for experiment prep!