Day 10 in Kauai: Tragedy in the Kauai Triangle

This morning, Team Archeo visited the Crum Cottage (aka the Professors’ house) to work on some data processing while Dr. Lipo and John worked on the hexacopter. There, I tried to work through some of the LiDAR data, which proved to be problematic. The bearings are impossible to know since its essentially all point data. Luckily, Dr. Wechsler saved the day and will subset the quarry area so that I just need to process it without the unnecessary stress of trying to figure out which points are those of the quarry.

In the afternoon, we accompanied Ted, Dr. Lipo, and Dr. Lee for some kite flying. This is when the drama started.

First, all the men left Avery and I, who are two very small girls, holding the kite by hand; we almost flew away with it! Then we finally get the kite set up properly and start driving to get Kite-Aerial-Photography of the vegetation grid… AND the kite snaps off and flies off with the cameras. Four of us, Lida Burney, John, Avery and I, chased after it. After walking a mile searching for the kite, the rest of the crew beat us there and took the kite. (Not very fair if you ask me :)) Luckily, the two cameras that were attached to the kite were safe and unharmed! The ironic part of the crash site is that this was the same crash site of the Gatewing X100. Henceforth, this is the Koloa Kauai Triangle, where aerial photography instruments go to crash. Despite all the drama it was exciting and we were all relieved that the kite was found and the camera was not broken.