Breaking the ice
Our new managing director, Tore Hofstad, started at Nortek on February 1 and we are pleased to report that he has finished the first week of training. This included deploying an instrument with the test group - as they do every day to make sure all instruments go into the ocean for 12-18 hours before they are shipped out the door. Since the winter has come down pretty hard on this year, the task was not quite as simple as he first thought......
AWAC ready for routine deployment testing
The first task was to clear out the ice that had formed overnight. At -10 deg. C, the ice forms pretty fast (once the water is well mixed around 0 deg. C -- this is mostly river run-off and the salinity is low). Afterwards you have to move the ice out of there with a shovel until the hole is big enough to get the instrument frame through. Finally, the instrument is deployed at 5-6 m depth while collecting data. The next morning, the crew will go back out to recover the instrument before the data are downloaded and checked. And then it is time for shipping so the AWACs shown in the photo are real instrument going to real customers.
Tore was not alone out in the winter cold since Haakon Steinbakk (left - new director of enginering) and Tristan Delahousse (middle - new area sales manager) joined him as spectators. All for the good cause of making sure we all understand the world our customers live in ;-)
Hard Work