News
Field and CPL Updates
2006 Greenland
Activity: DISC Drill Test - Summit Greenland
Period: 7/10-7/15/06
Weather Conditions:
Temperature range -23°C to -8°C, wind 1-16 knots.
ICDS Personnel on Site:
Jay Johnson
Kristina Dahnert
Michael Jayred
Bill Mason
Nicolai Mortensen
Paul Sendelbach
Scott Haman
John Fowler
Activities During Period:
DV visit - On Wednesday Alex Shturmakov, Kendrick Taylor, Matthew Kippenhan, and Sigfus Johnson arrived at Summit to see and review DISC operations. They were here all day Thursday and left mid day on Friday.
Drilling - The only drilling done this week was during the DV visit. A total of four drill runs were done. The total length of core drilled this week was 7.2 meters. The final bore hole depth for the season is 765.77 meters. Six 25ml fluid samples were taken from the bore hole for chemical analysis back in Madison. At Sigfus's request we put shims under the cutter head shoes to decrease the cutter pitch to ~3mm for one of the runs. The theory was that reducing the chip size would help the chips flow and pack better in the screens. No improvements were observed on this run.
Winch test - On Thursday after the drill runs were completed winch speed tests were conducted. Power usage was logged for all tests. The maximum safe speed that cable can be payed out when the drill is in the fluid is 1.0 meters/second. The winch maxed out at 2.86 meters/second while tripping up. All tests were conducted between surface and 650 meters. When attempting higher pay out speeds the cable is payed out faster than the drill can descend. We had this happen and it resulted in the cable twisting around itself forming a knot at about 250 meters above the drill. We saw no structural failures in the cable despite the numerous kinks in it. The knot had to be cut from the cable to bring the drill back to the surface. The recovery operation took about one hour and went smooth. The usable length of cable on the winch is now about 950 meters and it would require retermination to be used again.
Packing - On Monday and Tuesday we packed the MECC and organized the shipping container in preparation for reloading it. Tear down and packing within the DISC building began on Friday. All drill components are packed. The control room and winch wiring has been disconnected. The winch sections have been unbolted and they are ready to be hoisted from the winch pit. The winch control cabinet is fully unwired and ready for packing. The drill tower is disassembled and palletizing of it is under way. The screen cleaning, centrifuge, and fluid handling systems are packed. The optics tables are also packed.
