Day 8 – First Day in the Field
June 11, 2013Today started according to plan, got up around 6, breakfast, coffee then make lunch to go. We got started around 8, preparing our GPS units with the data dictionaries we worked on yesterday. Since I’m in the UAV group, we didn’t have a data dictionary or GPS unit, but we will heavily rely on the points collected by the Topo team, so we planned to go with them and collect their points. To get a point, we have to stay very still at the spot for at least 2 minutes, so we figured while the topo team was doing that we would fly the Phantom quadcopter with the Pentax Optio and colect an aerial view of our point. Using the Optio, the pictures should be geotagged. This would give us some good experience with the quadcopter and provide a good reference photo for the topo team’s points. That was the plan and we mostly followed it.
Only about a half hour into our trek, my shoe finally gave out and the sole had completely come off, except for the toe where I duct taped it earlier. On our lunch break I peeled the sole off and walked the rest of the day without it, that sucked!
On our sixth point, we were next to the left over set from “Meet Joe Young” taking our GPS reading and flying the quadcopter when an exact replica of the Magnum PI helicopter made a very close flyby. It was so close that it blew our quadcopter off course and out of orientation. I took the controls and got it back and landed safely. Just then it started raining on us, so we packed it up and took shelter under the left over movie set. We watched the helicopter make a series of very close flybys while a little car all decorated with Roxy logos and surfboards on the roof, drove almost to us, stop, turn around and do it again. After watching this a few times we figured out that they were filming a Roxy commercial, so we watched while it rained. Just as the rain subsided we started walking away to our next point deeper in the valley. Just as we were walking away, we got news over our radio that a blue car had broken into the park and if we saw it, we should get its license plate and report it. Cole immediately chased the car which sped off in the opposite direction and the helicopter immediately took off opposite of the car towards the back of the valley. We watched the helicopter go all the way to the back of the valley and land out of our view.
So, we started heading that way, Cole wanted to get the license of the helicopter since he was unable to get the license of the car as it was a show car and had no plates. When we got to our 7th point (the set from Stargate Atlantis) Cole kept walking determined to get the license of the helicopter. The rest of us climbed a hill nearby where we could see the helicopter parked with people hanging around it. I figured if Cole was going to confront these guys we should have it on camera, so we quickly grabbed the quadcopter and I flew it over near the helicopter, but it was really far and I couldn’t tell if I was over it or not, but it was worth a try. After hearing that Cole was coming back, I flew the quad back and started collecting our 7th point. By this time, we were behind and we really needed to get back to the group to head out. So, we quickly grabbed the point and started heading back. Cole told us that he basically interrogated the pilot and wrote down their license and left.
Once we got close enough to see Dr. Lipo’s car, he headed over to pick us up and we left the park for the day. Only then did we find out that the radio call was a false alarm and that the Roxy commercial was legit. It was apparently a last minute thing and not everyone in the park knew about it.
After that we headed to the grocery store from some supplies then to the house for dinner and data processing.
So, a fun and eventful first day of field work, hopefully we didn’t make the film guys mad and they won’t complain to the park owners because we really like it here 🙂