The crew arrived with their decked out van, complete with antennae and a nice workdesk for the ground control operator and computers. The Bramor GCS (ground control station) consists of a rugged computer and guidance circuitry interface; for launching it you need also a catapult and in sub zero temperatures, it has to be a pneumatic one.
We go over an extensive pre-flight checklist and prepare the UAS for its first mission between our position (Kiekula), the Pikku-Malla over to the Saana mountain. Quite a spectacular route.
After the cheklist and check operations are completed, Jari gets a go ahead to launch the Bramor.
And off it goes!
And lands after a 60 minute flight.
The post processing of the flight gave us a very nice set of results that we will be able to use in the Nunaliit framework.
Here is the sample first processed orthophoto in low resolution.
In the late afternoon our SINUNI and the HF antennae go up. Matthew prepares the QS1R software defined radio for work. More on those operations in the next blog entries.
We are also going to meet with Oula and Leena regarding the use of UAS systems in the Saami reindeer herders work.
There is clearly a lot of potential to setup a system of systems encompassing sensor networks, UAS technology and other types of remote sensing to combine traditional knowledges approaches and contemporary sensing technologies to create an even more sustainable (less use of snowmobiles) contemporary reindeer herding practice. Oula is interested in exploring these aspects of technology and long term, this could be an extremely good API exchange with the reindeer herding communities all across the Arctic.