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Z - F I D S N E W S L E T T E R No. 3 April 2005
Editor: Andy Smith (email andy@smitha.demon.co.uk)
Website: www.zfids.org.uk
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Planning for the Halley 50 Year Celebration weekend, 14-15 October
2006, is proceeding well; the organising committee met last weekend.
Bookings will open next month (towards the end of the month). The
Second Circular, which includes a booking form, will be sent out
with the May BAS Club Newsletter. Non-BAS Club members will be able
to download a copy from the website, and it will be sent out by post
to people who are not on email but have expressed an interest in
attending.
To mark the occasion, a commemorative DVD is being produced by
Stephen Williams, who sends this appeal to readers of the Z-fids
Newsletter:
"As part of the Halley 50th anniversary celebrations next year, I am
proposing to produce a commemorative photo DVD using winterers'
photographs of Halley base and surrounding area. Whilst the
preference will be for pictures that are of interest to
ex-winterers, I am also interested in the unusual and photogenic.
If anyone has selected slides/negatives or photos they are willing
to let me use, I would be very grateful if they could contact me and
I will provide further details. My address is 18 Croft Road,
Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 7AL or you can e-mail me at
stephenwilliams@newbury-18.freeserve.co.uk."
Please dig out anything suitable from your collections, and contact
Stephen.
At Halley, the autumn equinox is approaching and it is getting
darker and colder. The March diary is now online, written by Petra,
the wintering doctor. Also there are some rather nice pictures by
Miriam, one of the electronic engineers, to be found at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antarctic_m/
This year, there are four women wintering, a number equalled only
once before, in 2002.
It seems that having wintered at Halley is a good qualification for
becoming base commander at Bird Island (South Georgia). The current
BC, Vicky Auld, was on base 1997-98, while she will soon be relieved
by Allan Thomas (Tommo) who has just completed two winters at
Halley.
Following the piece in the last newsletter (No. 2) about the
Halley-5 bar, a number of people wrote in with differing accounts of
its origin. The consensus is that the bar was constructed in 1992 by
Richie Swales, with wood specially purchased by Ewan Hunter for
œ500. The provenance of the brass inlaid Antarctic continent is not
certain. It could have been done by Mike Lawton, made as a midwinter
present, or been brought from Halley-4. If anyone knows more, let me
know. There are a couple of pictures on the website (look under
Pictures on the 1992 page). There is also a picture of the Halley-I
(IGYE) bar on the website, and I have a picture of the Halley-II
bar. Does anyone have the Halley-II and IV ones? Also I wonder how
often each bar was "remodelled" over the years, when and by whom. If
I get enough feedback on this, I will do a feature about it for the
website.
Quite a few people wrote to say they had in their possession one of
the tattered Union Flags which has flown over the base in one of the
fifty years of its existence. Maybe we will try to get a number of
them to decorate the walls of the dining room at the reunion dinner.
The website is continuing to develop, and at the time of writing we
have had 236 people register on the site. Shortly making its
appearance will be information about the dogs at Halley, put
together by Keith Holmes. The page for each year is headed by a
section "Notable events/features of the year", but some years don't
have any entries. Was there anything special/ notable about your
year(s)? Write and let me know.
Does anyone want a professionally-made 1:100 scale model of
Halley-5? Going free to a good home. It was made for BAS by 3D
Services, Peterborough in June 1999, cost several thousand pounds,
and was used at an exhibition at the Royal Society in London. After
that it was in the BAS foyer for a while. It has the platforms, the
sledge-mounted buildings, tractors, people, aerials, oil drums, etc.
As a joke by the model makers there has even been a delivery of a
crate of milk to the bottom of the Laws steps. Everything is to the
1:100 scale except the SHARE radar aerials which are at 1:200 and
the dynasonde (AIS) 40 m aerials which are at 1:300 scale so they
would not be too high. Now BAS wants to get rid of it, because it is
costing too much to store. Is anyone interested in taking it off
their hands? The snag: the model measures 2.9 m by 1.7 m and is
waist high once mounted on its plinth.
There must have been very many different Halley T-shirts produced
over the years, with various designs on them. Someone (no names, no
pack-drill) was telling me the other day that one year for a change
ladies knickers were ordered, sporting a Halley logo. Does anyone
know of any other unusual garments which have been produced? By the
way, at the commemorative weekend, we will have a room devoted to
the display of memorabilia: T-shirts, midwinter magazines, photos,
midwinter presents etc., so bring along anything interesting (even
knickers!)
Again this newsletter is going out by email only, to the Z-fids
email list. If you did not receive it directly I suggest:
(a) If you have registered previously, check the whether your email
address has changed since then. If so, re-register.
(b) Check it has not been classified as spam by your ISP; apparently
the last one went to the junk folder of people using hotmail.
(c) If you have email facilities but have not yet registered, then
do so on the website and you will be put on the mailing list.
(d) If you not online, look at the website at a community internet
access point (e.g. local library) or internet cafe. Past newsletters
are available from the website.
The following people have registered, but their email addresses are
no longer working. If you are in touch with any of them, let me know
(or let THEM know):
John Blunn, Alan Burchell, Vince Carter, Mike Durrant, Ken Halliday,
Dave Hart, Dale Heaton, Seamus Kirwan, Jason Murray, Peter Noble,
Maurice Sumner, Mike Thurston, Dave Townsend, Adrian Woodroffe.
All the best, Andy
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