[Meridian2013]

I worked for Decca Navigator on their HIFIX survey system and every year they sent half-a-dozen technicians to Antarctica to support the summer hydrographic survey operations of HMS Endurance. There was some competition for this jolly but in Jan 1973 I got lucky and went down to Port Stanley to meet the Endurance and head south. Two of us ended up living in a tent for 2 weeks on a place called Flyspot Rocks, running the HIFIX beacon and living off ration packs. As the skipper was new to the ship and area we did a flag waving tour of all sorts of bases and on the way back we put into Deception Island and the abandoned BAS station. The radio room still had the ET-4336 TXs and I "liberated" a blank log-book as a souvenir.

We did the job, flew out of Stanley to Argentina courtesy of their air force and were back in the UK by mid-Feb. I often saw the adverts for radio operators with BAS but was never tempted, their trips were too long for me. I visited a lot of places with Decca and later employers but I don't think anywhere matched the things we saw down there, the Lemaire Channel in particular.

Went back to Stanley in 2008, a bit different to 1973!

73

Meridian