Day 22

Back to the field. I spent the day flying the Phantom quadcopter getting up close and personal with a particular section of cliff. I flew up and down the cliff side at varying angles with a color camera and a near infrared camera. Paul also flew with me, flying the thermal infrared camera. Mostly, the results of my flights were for Jeanette’s project, though I will be able to use the color photos in my project. In order to get close to the cliff, we had to do some hiking, so we tried to stay there without making trips back to base camp, but we ended up making a few trips anyway for different cameras or mounts. Anyway, it’s a difficult thing, flying the cliffs, with the color camera, we shoot a shot every 10 seconds, so I have to fly very slowly. The problem is, I’m flying vertically, which means I have to ascend and descend very slowly, which is very hard because you can’t really tell if you’re ascending or descending once you’re a few hundred feet away. You also have different winds to deal with, at low altitudes next to the cliffs, the wind tends to be very turbulent, at the higher altitudes, it smooths out, but tends to be an updraft. Anyway,  it’s a challenge and I like that. We finished the day a bit early as I was on kitchen duty that night, so I went back to the barn and had to cut up Costco chickens, something I often do at home, only this time I had to cut six. Then I had to clean, finally, I had time to write a blog post (2 days late), then I crashed out.

My "favorite" cliff

This is the cliff, it has a cave in the upper right area that is rumored to have a burial in it.

Here’s an aerial tour of the area I’m working in: