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GETTING TO THE ICE

 

WILLY FIELD

So in mid-December, operations transfer again, this time to Williams Field, known affectionately in town as "Willy Field." Willy Field is on the Ross Sea Ice Shelf and is around seven miles from town. According to the McMurdo
Station Guide, the runway "sits on approximately 25 feet of compacted snow, lying on top of 260 feet of ice, floating over 1800 feet of water." Because of all the snow, aircraft with wheeled landing gear can't use the runway. And this is where the LC-130 Hercs come in. Some people may complain about the longer flight times, but the planes have a very cool feature - skis so they can land on snow!

LC-130.
Photo by Josh Landis, National Science Foundation/Raytheon
Polar Services

Unlike wheeled landing gear, the skis can't be entirely retracted into the plane. So the skis create drag and make the planes less aerodynamic, which is part of the reason the planes take longer to get to McMurdo. But the skis also prevent the planes and their approximately 155,000 pounds of weight from sinking into Willy Field.

Skis work by decreasing the pressure of the plane or person or whatever on the snow by distributing their weight over a greater surface area. With tires the C-130s would exert a pressure of 116.6 pounds per square inch (psi) on the snow. Skis on the planes cut that number by more than half to 41.7 psi.

BACK TO PEGASUS

By the end of January, the farther away Pegasus Field starts to be used again as well as Willy Field. This is because the C-141 planes with wheeled landing gear that can land at Pegasus are larger than the C-130s and can carry more "stuff". As the season comes to an end, the pace gets frenetic with people trying to get off the continent before the airfields close entirely in March -and before the long Antarctic winter sets in.

- Karen

Sources:
The McMurdo Station Guide, 2003
The Lonely Planet Guidebook to Antarctica
National Science Foundation - Polar Connections, 1998