Day 15:

Plenty of action today.

Both Williams Aerospace and “Chuck n Iam” crews were flying their UAVs today, so there was a lot of excitement going on at the base camp. Even though there was only one drone in the air at a time, gathering and ensuring all the data was gathered and in the correct place or drive was quite a task. It was still fun to see the drones fly in both auto pilot and manual. Art also flew his little plane and he spun, flipped, and banked it with amazing agility. It’s not much use for what we’re concerned with, but it was still cool. But Iam’s and Chuck’s X8 took the air twice and they gathered a lot of imagery with the RICOH cameras, in both NIR and Visible Light. I think they covered around half of the valley or close to it. Processing will soon commence!

As for my research topic(s) Uluhe ferns is an interesting topic. I’d be interested in to seeing if native species have a higher presence where Uluhe is present, if they are present at all. I could also delve into the controlling factors of where Uluhe grows, as other students and myself have noticed that Uluhe are more prominent toward the back of the valley. However, Dr. Lipo suggested an idea that was also interesting. The research topic was something along the lines of “Does bathymetry determine ancient Hawaiian fishing practices?” It’ll be cool to see if there is any actual artifacts near the shore. One reservation is that I’m not sure if I’d be able to even recognize an artifact that’s been weathered by the currents, but it’s definitely worth looking into.

Anyway, tomorrow the X100 is supposed to fly. I’m curious as to how much of the valley the X100 will cover after one pass.