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A while ago I started a theme of Arctic and Antarctic exploration on this blog, and christened it ‘Antarctica: Greg’s files’. Now how my own virtual ‘polar exploration’ goes, - it seems like it has gone far beyond the material which laid originally under the grounds for this topic. Then it all began from the three photo-albums belonging to Greg, one of our pilots. Greg worked for ‘Kenn Borek’ before joining our company, and he flew the Twin Otters over both ‘caps of the World’.

I should confess that an interest to the topic kept growing all the time. I expanded the reach of my search inquiries to Russia, as during the “Soviet period” of its history the country was well known for its exploration efforts in both Arctic, and Antarctic. Well, it seems like they are now eager to get back on the field, which can surely be confirmed by their recent actions.

However, I am not going to let my search drift into exploration of ‘political’, or ’strategic’ aspects, I’m more after a facet of ‘how an individual is doing’ in these extreme areas, or some interesting technical piece, or detail.

For example, this picture, posted on Flickr, has steered some interest. One guy asked a question: “Are these An-2s still being put together?” The answer is “Yes”

As I wrote in the previous post, I found this picture on a Russian aviation Internet forum (see the forum’s logo in the picture’s right corner). Prompted by the interest, I communicated with a guy (his name is Yuri) who posted it, and it turned out that his dad was at the scene and took this picture. It is going to be a very interesting communication, and maybe, we’ll find out, for example,’how much time they would need to put one plane together‘, and ‘where were they flying off to after been assembled‘..

See, we’ve also got a priceless HUMAN contact - that’s what matters most.

Here’s another picture, but it is a way more modern one, taken just a few years ago. “Looks like Russians are still shipping aircraft destined to Antarctica on board of large vessels.. but they don’t take out wings from the plane any more”, you may think . But again, there’s been another interesting contact, with a real person that have some relations to the pictured event. It was also interesting to find out there’s a Russian company, a flying specialist in Arctic and Antarctic, and it is their An-2 rests in the ships’ belly.

In other words, we’ll see where this search may get us over to

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