On Wednesday we are joined by the East Lapland Vocational College crew, which is operating the C-ASTRAL BRAMOR unmanned aerial system.
The history of the development of this system goes back several years and it was first conceptualized already in 1999, as a sensor carrier as part of the Makrolab project. Later in 2004 the first prototype of the Spectral System UAS was built and flown and from 2006 on the development on the Bramor blended wing body (BWB) system started as a research project at the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia in a consortium that was led by Prof. Gvido Bratina, Prof. Marko Peljhan, Samo Stopar and Nejc Trošt.
It is an extremely capable small UAS, now built by the C-ASTRAL SME in Ajdovščina, Slovenia and operated by API and many other operators around the world, who mostly use it for classical surveying missions. API has flown it in the Arctic several times and it even had the luck to be tested in the Antarctic in 2010.
The East Lapland Vocational College in Kemijärvi was one of the early adopters of the system and it is used as a demonstrator for small fixed wing UAS technology in Finland.
After Esa Särkelä, Raimo Ivarinen and Jari Nykänen kindly bring us some missing items that we thought will be already in the Kiekula lab, (soldering iron, a small router, several UTP cables and other goodies), we are discussing the next day flights and areas to be covered and prepare a nice dinner.
The plan is to fly three types of missions, two orthophoto surveying ones and one with the thermal imager and the gimbal.
We will be ready to start at 9am on Thursday.
Meanwhile in the lab, preparations are made for the first long distance tests with the SINUNI sensornet. Kenny is programming away, Hafiz is working on the display system, graphing and learning Matlab. We also have our first longer meeting with Lisa Haskel, our programming wizzard who has dived head in into Nunaliit in earnest and a discussion with Terry, mostly revolving around the current situation in Iglulik. In terms of sleep, the nights are shorter and shorter. No surprises there.