Leighton Broadcasting’s Tony Abfalter Enjoying His Experience In Antarctica

MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA (KDLM) – Leighton Broadcasting corporate engineer Tony Abfalter has spent the last six months on a science base in Antarctica leading a communications team at McMurdo Station on Ross Island.

Abfalter left Minnesota in late January and, after 18 days of quarantining in Seattle and New Zealand, arrived at McMurdo Station on February 18th.

“McMurdo Station is the logistical base for our South Pole stations and a bunch of scientific field camps where we do a lot of research during the summer. During the winter, our main focus at McMurdo right now is prepping for the summer scientists coming in. My main job down here is to coordinate the communications on-station, specifically the radio side. I take care a lot of the two-way radios, paging systems, connectivity between bases, and the regular FM radio stations that we have on base here.”

Tony Abfalter has been working in Antarctica as a Senior Comm Tech since February (Submitted photo)

While it’s summertime in Detroit Lakes, it’s the middle of winter in Antarctica with temps well below zero and no sign of the sun since May.

“Antarctica gets six months of sunshine, and six months of darkness,” Abfalter said. “When I got here and it was light all 24 hours of the day, that seemed weirder than it being dark for 24 hours. But one of the biggest opportunities down here during the winter is to really enjoy the night sky. The auroras down here are amazing. There’s no light pollution or anything like that. The darkness does come with its perks, it makes the walk down to work a little bit nicer when you get to walk under the stars.”

McMurdo Station in Antarctica (Tony Abfalter, July 6, 2022.)

Abfalter, a volunteer firefighter with the Holdingford Fire Department, is also on the search-and-rescue team at McMurdo Station.

“With SAR team, we take care of anybody that gets stranded or gets injured while they’re outside of town. There are a lot of trails and places open where people can get out and hike. The training being on the fire department and being in EMS went into it. Some of the things we down here to train are rock climbing and repelling, ice climbing and things like that so can support SAR down here. When I first got down here there were penguins everywhere but they’ve since pushed out with the sea ice. But when I first got here, they were always sitting around right outside my shop. We also see a lot of seals and a lot of skimmers which are like seagulls. ”

The crew at McMurdo Base, which is only about 126 people during the winter compared to 1,800 during the summer, does a lot of activities, including a Fourth of July parade a couple of weeks ago.

“It’s a very short parade,” said Abfalter. “It goes from telephone pole to telephone pole, probably only about 150 feet. We have a bunch of different departments put together floats. I was on the SAR team float. It’s a fun little event. We had a grill out to celebrate the Fourth, we had burgers and brats just like we would back home. It was a lot of fun.”

@tonyabfalter 4th of July Parade #mcmurdostation #antarctica #scottbase ♬ original sound – Tony Abfalter

Abfalter originally signed on for about 10 months on McMurdo Station but could be coming home a couple of weeks early, something his family near St. Cloud is very excited for.

“With internet and FaceTime and things like that, it’s not nearly as secluded as it used to be,” Abfalter. “I’m able to call home and see my wife and two daughters. The internet can be spotty at times. It’s about the same quality of internet as what you have at home, but we’re sharing that with 126 other people, closer to 2,000 in the summer. But it does make talking to the family possible, which is really great. The original plan was to stay down here until October, but I’ve already got most of the work done so I’ll be coming back around the middle of August…just in time to catch a little bit of fall before winter hits again.”