A Bird’s Eye View
July 2, 2015 4:48 pm Leave your thoughts
I’d like to start off by apologizing for the delay in getting this blog written; these past couple of weeks have been surprisingly busy for me. I spent the last two days (Tuesday June 30th and Wednesday July 1st) in a helicopter, flying over dozens of roads to complete road inspections.
To get to the point of actually flying these roads, a lot of prep that had to be done first. All of the roads we were checking out had to be put into a GPS unit, and paper copies of maps had to also be printed out so that notes could be made about specific points on each road. We also uploaded PDF copies of these maps onto our tablets and, using an app called “PDF Maps”, we were able to identify exactly where we were on the map. The app essentially turns your tablet (or phone) into a GPS unit, and you can use any map that has been georectified (basically meaning it has specific, real world coordinates associated with each point on the map).
Once all of that work was completed, I was finally ready to get into a helicopter (after an orientation from the pilot of course). The last time I had flown in a helicopter was back in 2011, when I was a Junior Forest Ranger with the Alberta Government — an amazing program that I’d highly recommend to anyone in high school. Back then, I went for a short helicopter flight to a fire tower (which we climbed up) and, from there, back to the Peace River airport.
This time, my flights were much longer. Both days started around 8:30 am and went until 4:30 pm on Tuesday, and 3:00 pm on Wednesday. It turns out that when I fly for extended periods of time, I get motion sickness. Who knew! It was the first time I had ever experienced motion sickness. Luckily, I had listened to advice from some friends and brought Gravol with me, which helped.
Despite being mildly nauseous both days, we managed to get a lot of roads flown and inspected. I now get to spend the next little bit completing paperwork and entering the data that I collected into spreadsheets, which is where the real fun begins.
Below you’ll find a picture of the helicopter I flew in, a picture of the gear that sat in my lap for every flight, and a selfie with the helicopter. I managed to resist taking a selfie wearing the helicopter “ears,” as I’ve heard them called before, but I did catch part of my volunteer t-shirt from the University of Alberta’s orientation program (go Golden Bears and Pandas!) — the bear-paw print seems appropriate given my time surveying the wilderness.
