[South Florida DX Association] Peter l - A Journalists View.

[Bill Marx]

>From Bill NA2M
-Bill W2CQ



N2WB!  A job well done!

March 29, 2006

Radio enthusiast joins team for Antarctic adventure
By EILEEN ZAFFIRO
Staff Writer

ORMOND BEACH -- For six weeks, Bill Beyer dealt with tiring international 
flights, ship rides with the vessel rolling violently from side to side, 
meager amounts of food and blinding blizzards.

He lived in shelters with temperatures hovering around 35 degrees, and the 
little sleep he got often came sitting in a chair.

Beyer, 46, an Ormond Beach resident and world traveler, thrust himself into 
all those unpleasantries to experience one of his greatest adventures yet.

He and 21 men from eight countries made the cut for an elite team of 
intrepid explorers who set off in January for Peter I Island, a tiny patch 
of rock and ice south of the Antarctic Circle in the Bellingshausen Sea.

The team's Web site boasts that more people have flown in outer space than 
have set foot on Peter Island. They had to bring everything needed for their 
roughly two-week stay, and the simplest day-to-day tasks provided 
challenges.

But difficulties trudging through knee-high snow to use an outhouse and 
enduring 60 mph winds while setting up shelters were exactly the types of 
battles the men craved.

"It was very physical and very demanding. But I'm the type when the going 
gets tough, the tough get going," Beyer said.

Most of the men lost weight, especially those who suffered days of 
seasickness on the rocking ship.

Mere survival is a full-time job in a place such as Peter Island, which was 
created by a volcano. Every time they walked outside, they had to watch for 
snow-covered crevasses that dropped hundreds of feet. There also were 
avalanches of rock rolling down the side of the mountain when the snow and 
ice melted on warmer days.

The dauntless travelers added an extra challenge. Most of them are ham radio 
operators, and they spent every moment possible sending and receiving 
communications.

The team logged more than 87,000 contacts with about 150 countries and even 
chatted with the International Space Station during their roughly two weeks 
of radio operations.

"It was very demanding to be on the air 24 hours a day," Beyer said. "It was 
nonstop. The first day I just slept for 30 minutes in the chair by the 
radio."

Their icy odyssey began in January, when they rendezvoused in Punta Arenas, 
Chile, at the southernmost tip of South America. The next leg of their 
journey was a week at sea heading south, and getting close enough to Peter 
Island to helicopter their team members and supplies off the ship.

The daily update sent to the team's Web site described their experience as 
they drifted through the fog and got within a mile of the tiny island the 
night of Feb. 5.

"It is really cold out on the deck," one of the explorers wrote. "The island 
is one of the spookiest sights we've ever seen and looks very foreboding 
with the fog and the wind. Huge rocks and glaciers are intermittently 
visible."

They wound up drifting just off the fog-shrouded island for two more days.

All but three of the 22 team members got onto the island by helicopter on 
Feb. 8, but stubborn weather kept the last three -- along with much of their 
food and their outhouse -- from arriving until Feb. 12.

But they also basked in beautiful vistas.

"Being on top of this glacier, looking down at the water and seeing the 
whales blow, seeing the sun go a bit below the horizon and the moon coming 
up, it's just an awesome site," said Alberto Hernandez, a team member from 
Melbourne, Fla.

Less than a week after they all got on the island, the team learned more bad 
weather was coming their way. They tried to leave early, but the weather 
deteriorated into whiteout conditions and they couldn't set sail for another 
week.

On March 6 they all flew out of Chile and headed back to their countries.

The final entry in the Web diary ended with these words:

"As we head home, we have with us some fantastic memories and some scenes 
indelibly imprinted on our minds."

eileen.zaffiro at news-jrnl.com