Day 11

Today was our make-up field day to recover the points we lost yesterday. This time we had 2 timbles loaded with our data dictionary so we were able to split into 2 teams. Peter and Audrey got the points in the south valley and Adriana and I headed for the far North East side of the valley. Adriana and had the challenge of going into the swampy areas to find the boundary to the Kualoa Ranch property. We went through the nursery, cattle field and the swamp ponds. After going through some gates and holes in the fences we found out that much of the North East valley is blocked off private property. This didn’t matter much since the vegetation seemed to be the same mixed pattern we saw at our base and deep into the valley.

After some exploring we headed back to base for lunch. We saw some guys from Willam’s Aerospace out with their gear doing some test flights. It was pretty cool looking at more of the military side of the UAV with a more ISR mission focus. There was a lot of money flying out there in the valley today and I definitely sensed some tension in the group, especially during take off and landing times. The delta wing shaped UAV was the coolest looking one. It is mostly made out of fiberglass and it seemed to be the most agile and quiet UAV I’ve seen out in the field yet.

When we got back home our vegetation group was stuck trying to clean up our data/attribute table while everyone was having fun and playing apples to apples. Hopefully our work all pays off!