I woke early this morning (7.00) – early, because brunch on Sat & Sun is not until 10.30. Anyway, I fired up the GC and the baseline did not look good, especially at > 10 min. Cleaning helped (and cost me 90 min) and the baseline was fine – I might have to do that every morning or I keep the GC at a higher temperature overnight.
I have run fibre and MilliQ water blanks throughout the day and tested the signal with a direct injection of benzene, which worked fine. The blanks are “soso” – similar to the GC-MS blanks (a lot of peaks, usually < 45 pA, but they are going to be interfering more, because of the lacking underlying mass spectrum. The fibres are brand-new, but still bleeding a little. Let’s see how the intensities and retention times for the standards look like.
I have also been outside the station by truck today and checked out some of the potential sampling sites. Tomorrow we will do another outing and I will finalise my decision and set up shop at the site that I would like to probe daily (most probably the new TX Building). It’s been fun outside – getting a feel for the vast expanse of the High Arctic. I also got a little practice with the Sat-phone and (listening) to the radio traffic.
