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Phoenix Airfield
Phoenix Airfield is an airstrip in Antarctica opened in early 2017, designed to replace the Pegasus Field's role in serving McMurdo Station. In last few years of Pegasus Field's operation, it had been plagued with warmer temperatures combined with dust and dirt blown in from nearby Black Island, causing excessive melting making the runway unusable at the end of the summer season. Accordingly, Pegasus, and the Ice Runway (which has not been consistently used in recent years), were planned to be replaced with a new "Alpha Runway" near Williams Field, constructed using compressed snow technology. A search for a replacement site began in 2014; serious construction began during the 2015-16 summer. The new runway is about 3 miles northwest of Pegasus, to be out of the wind patterns of the Black Island dust. It is based completely on compacted snow, rather than the "blue ice" base under Pegasus. With the new design and construction technique, its runway is designed to withstand approxi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McMurdo Station
McMurdo Station is a United States Antarctic research station on the south tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), a branch of the National Science Foundation. The station is the largest community in Antarctica, capable of supporting up to 1,258 residents, and serves as one of three year-round United States Antarctic science facilities. All personnel and cargo going to or coming from Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station first pass through McMurdo. By road, McMurdo is 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from New Zealand's smaller Scott Base. History The station takes its name from its geographic location on McMurdo Sound, named after Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo of . The ''Terror'', commanded by Irish explorer Francis Crozier, along with expedition flagship ''Erebus'' under command of James Clark Ross, first charted the area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ross Island
Ross Island is an island formed by four volcanoes in the Ross Sea near the continent of Antarctica, off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound. Ross Island lies within the boundaries of Ross Dependency, an area of Antarctica claimed by New Zealand. History Discovery Sir James Ross discovered it in 1840, and it was later named in honour of him by Robert F. Scott. Ross Island was the base for many of the early expeditions to Antarctica. It is the southernmost island reachable by sea. Huts built by Scott's and Shackleton's expeditions are still standing on the island, preserved as historical sites. Today Ross Island is home to New Zealand's Scott Base, and the largest Antarctic settlement, the U.S. Antarctic Program's McMurdo Station. Greenpeace established World Park Base on the island and ran it for five years, from 1987 to 1992. Geography Because of the persistent presence of the ice sheet, the island is sometimes taken to be part of the Antarctic mainland. Its are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of . Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of . Antarctica is, on average, the coldest, driest, and windiest of the continents, and it has the highest average elevation. It is mainly a polar desert, with annual precipitation of over along the coast and far less inland. About 70% of the world's freshwater reserves are frozen in Antarctica, which, if melted, would raise global sea levels by almost . Antarctica holds the record for the lowest measured temperature on Earth, . The coastal regions can reach temperatures over in summer. Native species of animals include mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades. Where vegetation o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pegasus Field
Pegasus Field was an airstrip in Antarctica, the southernmost of three airfields serving McMurdo Station. It closed due to excessive melting in the summer season caused by warmer temperatures combined with dust and dirt blown in from nearby Black Island. The last flight was on December 8, 2016 and it was replaced by Phoenix Airfield with flights expected to start in February 2017. Pegasus was originally conceived as a blue ice runway capable of handling wheeled aircraft year-round, but as it was developed, it was enhanced with a 4-inch layer of compacted snow on top—thus more properly characterizing it as a white ice runway. Other local runways are the snow runways at Williams Field that are limited to ski-equipped aircraft, and the Ice Runway on the sea-ice available during the summer Antarctic field season. The field is named after ''Pegasus'', a C-121 Lockheed Constellation that made a forced landing on unprepared terrain in bad weather on October 8, 1970. None of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ice Runway
The Ice Runway is the principal runway for the U.S. Antarctic Program during the summer Antarctic field season due to its proximity to McMurdo Station. The other two runways in the area are the snow runway at Williams Field (NZWD) and the compacted snow runway at Phoenix Airfield (NZFX), which replaced Pegasus Field (NZPG) in 2017. The sea ice runway is capable of handling wheeled aircraft, which have included to date: Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, Lockheed C-141 Starlifter, Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Lockheed P-3 Orion. In the summer season of 2009/2010 the RNZAF trialed a modified Boeing 757 operationally. The intention is to use the Boeing 757 for passenger transport, thereby freeing up capacity for C17 cargo space. The annual sea-ice runway for wheeled aircraft is constructed at the start of each season and is used until early December when the sea ice begins to break up. Subsequently flight operations are moved back to Williams Field. Pilots land ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Williams Field
Williams Field or Willy Field is a United States Antarctic Program airfield in Antarctica. Williams Field consists of two snow runways located on approximately 8 meters (25 ft) of compacted snow, lying on top of 8–10 ft of ice, floating over 550 meters (1,800 ft) of water. The airport, which is approximately seven miles from Ross Island, serves McMurdo Station and New Zealand's Scott Base. Until the 2009–10 summer season, Williams was the major airfield for on-continent aircraft operations in Antarctica. Williams Field is named in honor of Richard T. Williams, a United States Navy equipment operator who drowned when his D-8 tractor broke through the ice on January 6, 1956. Williams and other personnel were participants in the first Operation Deep Freeze, a U.S. military mission to build a permanent science research station at McMurdo Station in anticipation of the International Geophysical Year 1957–58. Operation The skiway was typically in operation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christchurch International Airport
Christchurch Airport is the main airport that serves Christchurch, New Zealand. It is located to the northwest of the city centre, in the suburb of Harewood. Christchurch (Harewood) Airport officially opened on 18 May 1940 and became New Zealand's first international airport on 16 December 1950. It is the third busiest airport in New Zealand, after Auckland and Wellington, by both annual passengers and aircraft movements. Christchurch and Auckland are the only airports in New Zealand that regularly handle Boeing 747 and Airbus A380 aircraft. The airport is curfew free, operating 24 hours a day. The prevailing wind in Christchurch is from the north-east and to a lesser extent from the south-west, but the city is also affected by Canterbury's nor'wester foehn wind. As a result, the airport has two perpendicular runways: a primary runway (02/20) oriented with the north-easterly and south-westerly prevailing winds, and a secondary runway (11/29) oriented for use during nor'we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TACAN
A tactical air navigation system, commonly referred to by the acronym TACAN, is a navigation system used by military aircraft. It provides the user with bearing and distance (slant-range or hypotenuse) to a ground or ship-borne station. It is a more accurate version of the VOR/ DME system that provides bearing and range information for civil aviation. The DME portion of the TACAN system is available for civil use; at VORTAC facilities where a VOR is combined with a TACAN, civil aircraft can receive VOR/DME readings. Aircraft equipped with TACAN avionics can use this system for en route navigation as well as non-precision approaches to landing fields. The Space Shuttle is one such vehicle that was designed to use TACAN navigation but later upgraded with GPS as a replacement. The typical TACAN onboard user panel has control switches for setting the channel (corresponding to the desired surface station's assigned frequency), the operation mode for either transmit/receive (T/R, to get ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microwave Landing System
The microwave landing system (MLS) is an all-weather, precision radio guidance system intended to be installed at large airports to assist aircraft in landing, including 'blind landings'. MLS enables an approaching aircraft to determine when it is aligned with the destination runway and on the correct glidepath for a safe landing. MLS was intended to replace or supplement the instrument landing systems (ILS). MLS has a number of operational advantages over ILS, including a wider selection of channels to avoid interference with nearby installations, excellent performance in all weather, a small "footprint" at the airports, and wide vertical and horizontal "capture" angles that allowed approaches from wider areas around the airport. Although some MLS systems became operational in the 1990s, the widespread deployment envisioned by some aviation agencies never became a reality. There were two reasons: (economic) while technically superior to ILS, MLS did not offer sufficiently greate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RNAV
Area navigation (RNAV, usually pronounced as "''ar-nav"'') is a method of instrument flight rules (IFR) navigation that allows an aircraft to choose any course within a network of navigation beacons, rather than navigate directly to and from the beacons. This can conserve flight distance, reduce congestion, and allow flights into airports without beacons. Area navigation used to be called "random navigation", hence the acronym RNAV. RNAV can be defined as a method of navigation that permits aircraft operation on any desired course within the coverage of station-referenced navigation signals or within the limits of a self-contained system capability, or a combination of these. In the United States, RNAV was developed in the 1960s, and the first such routes were published in the 1970s. In January 1983, the Federal Aviation Administration revoked all RNAV routes in the contiguous United States due to findings that aircraft were using inertial navigation systems rather than the gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Airports In Antarctica
__TOC__ List , 18/36Ice , - valign=top , Palmer SkiwayHeliport , , NZ12 , , Anvers Island , , 01/19Snow , - valign=top , Patriot Hills Blue-Ice Runway , , SCPZ , , Ellsworth Mountains , , 24MIce , - valign=top , Pegasus Field(serving McMurdo Station and Scott Base) , , NZPG , , Ross Island , , 15/33Ice08/26Ice (skiway) , - valign=top , Perseus RunwayTemporary Airfield , , , , , , 10/28Blue Ice , - valign=top , Petrel Skiway , , SA47 , , Dundee Island , , 08/26Ice , - valign=top , Phoenix Airfield(serving McMurdo Station and Scott Base) , , NZFX , , Ross Island , , 15/33Compacted Snow , - valign=top , Plateau Station Skiway , , AT20 , , Queen Maud Land , , 18/36Ice , - valign=top , Plog Island Skiway(serving Davis) , , , , Plog Island , , (variable)Ice , - valign=top , Princess Elisabeth Skiway , , QAP , AT99 , Utsteinen Nunatak , , Blue Ice , - valign=top , Progress Skiway , , , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
