Day 17: Hawaiian Triangle

After acquiring the prehistoric maps from yesterday’s museum trip, I started to process the data this morning.  By using the Erdas program, I can align the scanned maps to a remotely sensed base image that is already properly projected.  I spent most of the morning learning how to use the program, with Lawrence and Paul’s help.

In the afternoon, we drove back out to the vegetation grid to fly our own kite and hexacopter.  The kite was flying well, so we attached the camera to it and hoped for some awesome imagery.  Everything was going well until one small mishap.  The string that attached the kite to the anchor snapped, and with that, the kite (and camera) flew away into the Hawaiian wind.

In the blink of an eye, Sam and I both bolted for the jungle to go find the camera and kite.  Everyone was searching high and low, but to no avail.  All the tourists we passed reported no sightings of a fly-away kite, but we did end up fooling them into thinking we were from Kauai, since we were talking about our research instruments and sites (our work here is done).

Finally, we received a call from Drs. Lee and Lipo reporting that they had found the kite and camera fully functional and in tact.  Even more surprising, the crash site was also the crash site of our remote controlled plane that crashed last week.  Understandably, we decided not to fly the hexacopter, called it a day, and headed back to the house.