Your equipment is irreparably broken. These are not words you want to hear 2 weeks before your shipment leaves for the final and most vital fieldwork season for your PhD research. Even though that precise phrase was not used, that was the gist of the email that I received yesterday morning. My heart and stomach felt like they were imitating a routine by the Olympic 2012 gymnasts.
It’s ok. I assumed there was a possibility that this might happened. I had crossed my fingers and hoped that this wasn’t going to be the case, but I guess you can’t fix equipment through will power alone. So what to do now? Plan B.
The inclinometer (the aforementioned equipment) is a vital piece of equipment measuring the deviation of the borehole from vertical. Without it, any other borehole data I collect will be pointless. It is not so much a case of if I should hire one, but where to hire it from and is it within budget. With specialist equipment such as this, there are not many places you can get the kit from. In this case, there is only one company, based in the Yukon. We are still in the process of finalising the hire, but it looks like we may have a feasible Plan B that is, more importantly, within budget. Phew!
More updates to come soon. Shipment leaves on 11th July, so not long to go now!
INTERACT Arctic Research 