Out in survey area

Days 16 to 18, 21st to 23rd Feb 2009:

Finally, i'm out in the field and down in the lines. My first day out was with Mohd, the Recording Crew Manager (RCM). He's a Sudanese residing in Egypt and he somehow reminds me a bit of an African American. We left the camp after breakfast, around 9am.

Basically, he drove around and stopped at various parts of the line to show me some of the equipment and explained their uses. Some of the equipment i saw was the FDU (Field Digitizer Unit, the LAUL (Land Acquisition Unit Line) and the vibrator trucks. He explained how the entire layout was equivalent to a computer network as each FDU, LAUL and LAUX has their own IP address.

The vibrator trucks or vibes

Around noon, he took me to the recorder truck, where all the data is collected. It's also the monitoring and control centre for the vibes, for monitoring line breaks (meaning, a disruption in the ground network) and is basically the centre of communications for all that is going on around the survey area. It can get quite busy in the recorder truck and there's only two observers in there. When we were there, it was quite a busy day, with the VHF radios crackling practically almost every few minutes. Rakesh here, Rakesh there, Rakesh everywhere! I had my lunch there (lunch is delivered to those working in the field in tiffin carriers) or more specifically, Mohd's lunch as mine got sent to the wrong place. I was the only one eating as the observers were too busy to eat.

The recorder truck, the centre of all activity

After that, we were back in the lines. I spent the rest of the day following Syed (or Said, i don't know how to spell his name), a line supervisor as Mohd had other things to take care of. He's quite a nice guy as well and through our conversations, i learned that he has two daugters, one just born last month and that almost his entire family is in the seismic business. It was quite an interesting day just going around and seeing how he works. At one point, he helped one of the trucks which had gotten stuck in the sand by calling another truck to help pull out the other one. Finally, before the end of the day, he checked the line layouts in another block and found some mistakes. As he was off correcting them, i wandered around taking pictures.

One of the plants in the desert

A close-up of the plant's flowers

Tennis balls? Out here in the desert?

Look again. They're actually small watermelons

Camel tracks

On my second day, I was taken to the recording truck where i was to spend the day by one of the J.O.s (Junior Observer) called Azedeen. It was one of the bumpiest rides of my life. Basically, in the recording truck one observer monitors the network of cables and receivers to see if there are problem areas. He then gets the troubleshooter or J.O. (junior observer) to go there and fix the problem. He also instructs the layout crew on where to pick up the cables and geophones and also where to lay them as shooting progresses throughout the day. This was Rakesh's responsibilities. Gabriel, the other observer was concentrated on the vibes. He monitors the shots to see if they're good or not and basically controls when to shoot and when to stop. He communicates only with the vibe pushers (another truck that guides the vibrator trucks). It was a tough day for them as line breaks were popping up here and there, mostly in areas where the cable was lying on the blacktop (tar road; when i first heard the word, i went like, huh?) unprotected. On the other hand, it did give them time to sit back a bit and eat their lunches. I didn't bombard them with too many questions as i didn't want to get in their way and half of my time was also spent looking at some of the manuals. In fact, half of the day i didn't really know what to do so towards the later part of the afternoon, i explored the area around the recorder truck and took more pictures. By the way, did i mention that there were no toilets around?

Animal tracks. Wonder what made these?

Lizard tracks?

Desert rabbit/hare tracks?

I think these are mouse tracks crossing a centipede's tracks, perhaps

Today, i followed John (another RCM) who's a Canadian. The morning was just spent taping down the existing roadmats and laying more roadmats for other cables crossing the blacktop. I didn't do much, just helped to wave the red flag to slow motorists down as they worked on the blacktop. That was pretty much it for today. We got back to camp by 1pm and i spent the rest of the afternoon trying to work on my field report (and going, what...i have to write this?) and studying my CBT. Wonder what's up for tomorrow?