
An abandoned lifeboat at world’s end (2011) - PokemonNoGo
https://mikedashhistory.com/2011/02/13/an-abandoned-lifeboat-at-worlds-end/
======
speps
Comment from March 2016 by "quasi-libet":

> Finally, I have found out the end of the text on page 129 of “Transactions
> of the Oceanographical Institute”.

“The scientific reconnaissance vessel “Slava-9” began his regular 13th cruise
with the “Slava” Antarctic whaling fleet on 22 October 1958 … On 27 November
she got to Bouvet Island. A group of sailors landed which couldn’t leave the
island in time because of worsened weather and stayed on it about 3 days. The
people were withdrawn only by helicopter on 29 November”.

The mystery is resolved. The answer turned out to be a quite prosaic one. I am
even feeling kind of regret for it.

~~~
gambiting
So pretty much what the author suspected - it was a soviet vessel, and the
details of the adventure were most likely hidden deep in an ex-soviet archive
somewhere, almost impossible to find(until someone did, obviously).

~~~
caf
Well, with the completely unexpected addition that the mysterious flattened
copper sheet may well have been left by a ham radio operator who made an
expedition to the island just for the purpose of making radio contact from
there.

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gambiting
As luck would have it, there is an expedition to Bouvet right _now_ and yes,
you can see their progress live and read updates on facebook. I've read about
this mystery years ago, it's fascinating that there are people there right
this second as I write this.

[https://share.garmin.com/bouvet](https://share.garmin.com/bouvet)

[https://www.facebook.com/groups/639362206232014/about/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/639362206232014/about/)

~~~
24gttghh
So from what I can gather, they're going all the way to Bouvet Island to
bounce radio waves off the Moon and back to Earth. Why??? To say they did it?
I don't understand this hobby.

~~~
lb1lf
Twofold - minimum!

First of all - many amateur radio operators take great interest in having been
in contact with lots of countries and territories.

Some are trivial - I just checked, so far this year I’ve got some 80 German
stations in my log - some are exceedingly rare (Like Bouvet. Or North Korea,
as the authorities there have a less than enlightened stance on individuals
communicating with the outside world.)

The din you’d hear if you tuned a radio receiver to a frequency used by the
Bouvet exoedition would be similar to what you’d hear if you ventured into a
stadium packed with tweens and yelled that you had tickets for a Bieber meet
and greet to whoever wanted them the most - literally tens of thousands of
operators calling them at once - some for the associated bragging rights, some
for testing their station’s capabilities...

More specifically about the moonbounce thing - that is HARD; you blast as much
power as you can get hold of into the biggest, most badass antenna you can
afford, and then, if the stars align, the gods smile &c - your signal is
strong enough to get reflected back to earth where someone else may hear it
(if they, too, went through major inconveniences to hone their antenna
badassery enough to pick up a gnat’s fart from half a million miles away.

There’s hardly any rational reason why one would do such a thing, but the
sense of accomplishment once you nail it is indescribable.

~~~
24gttghh
>There’s hardly any rational reason why one would do such a thing, but the
sense of accomplishment once you nail it is indescribable.

Ah ha! Some people just have waaaay more money for their hobbies than I do.

~~~
lb1lf
Oh, it can easily be mindbogglingly expensive, but it can be done on a
(relative) shoestring, too. (Though arguably, to some extent, going cheap just
means you are leeching off someone else, as the guy at the other end will need
a bigger everything to make the signal to noise ratio acceptable at both
ends.)

I've tried it a few times, out of pocket expense was way less than $1k - using
software to generate smart modulation schemes like JT65b, you can get
performance orders of magnitude better than what a human ear can pick up -
leading to orders of magnitude less impressive - cough - stations.

Costs were more or less like this:

Computer - $0. (Already had one for other purposes) Software - $0. (Gotta love
freeware!) Soundcard interface - $30 in parts Transceiver - $250 (Early
nineties vintage) 150W solid-state amplifier, 2nd hand - $40, needed fixing.
Low-loss feedline - $65, plus a couple of hours in the car to pick it up. Mast
- $0 (Repurposed an old flagpole) Antenna - $180 (DIY 2x12 element yagis. Cost
of materials)

Now, this is a bare-bones setup - more power and more antenna would make life
a lot easier. Also, it would be nice to be able to rotate the antennas (Now I
just aim for where the moon will rise and wait for it to whizz by)

However, it works. After a fashion.

------
vortico
I absolutely love good writing like this. If this was a journalist's quick
report or a Wikipedia article, it wouldn't be as riviting as this is, and I
might have lost interest partially through.

~~~
baddox
A rare instance of fascinating writing in the “long-form” genre. I would
expect a long-form article on this topic to begin with an intriguing
paragraph, then, immediately upon mentioning the name of explorer Jean-
Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, diverge into a dozen paragraphs describing
in the floweriest language Bouvet’s grandmother’s lifelong love of daffodils.

------
arethuza
_" A speck of ice in the middle of a freezing fastness: a few square miles of
uninhabited volcanic basalt groaning under several hundred feet of glacier,
scraped raw by gales, shrouded by drifts of sea-fog, and utterly devoid of
trees, shelter, or landing places."_

Makes me think of:

 _" I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."_

------
ggambetta
Not only that remote island has satellite imagery in Google Maps... _it is in
3D_.

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dustinupdyke
Great read. If you enjoyed, you may also like Island of the Lost.
[https://www.audible.com/pd/History/Island-of-the-Lost-
Audiob...](https://www.audible.com/pd/History/Island-of-the-Lost-
Audiobook/B01DCNHXGA)

"Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean,
285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling
winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked
there means almost certain death."

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tw1010
Why is it that we get so affected by symbolism like that? Is it just because
telling stories is such a big part of our culture, or is it something deeper,
more physiological than that? Does anyone know of a good book that can shine
more light on humanity's strange relationship to symbols?

~~~
jacobush
It's all we ever do. Clothes with symbols, as symbols. Computers doing nothing
but manipulate symbols for us, all day long.

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aphrax
slight tangent - but I've never heard of the 'Roaring Forties' \- Turns out
it's the name for a particular set of winds - Fascinating stuff

~~~
yardie
Open a browser window to windy.com and scroll down to the lower Southern Ocean
latitudes. You'll see the complex weather patterns that exist down there [0].
Further south is the Furious Fifties.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties)

------
Robotbeat
This reminds me of The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.

