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(This one is for Jill)
Up...up....and away! With black and blue hiking boot marks...I am kicking myself. So, what is it that I did? I said "NO" to going in the helicopter with my husband. To start with, last week he went up in the single engine plane. I do not do single engine planes. When the topic came up about the helicopter it was almost a no-brain-er. Until, I got there and realize how cool it was. Unfortunately, I wasn't dressed warm enough (because the window is open or the door is off) and the pilot didn't bring gear for me. Shucks, darn, poop! I got some photos of lucky boy....
What was he doing? So, he has elk collared. We need to find these elk and get the collars, hypothetically before this Saturday. We have located some of the elk by using the GPS systems built into the collar. Problème numéro un, the collars are not working properly. Leading to problème numéro deux, we can not connect. (Radio to animal)
Connect...using this really cool little computer thingy (base station) as well as, a telemetric device, all kinds of antennas, wires and other sciency things to locate the animal. The collars are programmed to fall of this Saturday. Then we have a five hour window to find them....in thousands of acres. Working in the air makes locating the elk faster so we know where to start. Some collars have passed on (died) with out any possible way of retrieving them because they died before we could get a fix on where the elk are.(Expensive problem) Then, we have the ghost signals, the bounce signals and the what the hell signals. (Using all the sciency things together they "talk" to each other, that is a signal.)When we connect, he is able to get the data from the collar, without the collar, no data. Hello 5-6 years of graduate school and then I'll be looking for the nearest sky scrapper... Even with other professionals helping, the consensus is that the collars are not to standard. A day late and triple digits short we have to do whatever we can to get the collars back.
If you really didn't follow that it is probably because I left out so many details, but the idea of talking science on my blog really freaks me out. It freaks me out that I know what I know.... on to more important things........
WHAT ANOTHER GIVE-A-WAY!!!!!!!! Next post. I can not combine that would be way...wrong.
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4 comments:
oooh. i totally understand his dilemma. i lost a bunch of data due to equipment failure in a field study and couldn't retrieve it. it sucks! and yes- grad school is ENDLESS. i just had an interview for the last step in my graduate progress and realized i'm almost done- it's such a weird feeling. how do you actually "end" grad school?!
i am with you on helicopters and single engine planes. scary!
Very cool! I have never been in a helicopter! Visiting from SITS.
Thanks for filling me in on this, it sounds complicated, interesting and oh so cool. It would have been so exciting to be up above all of that in the helicopter, will you get a 2nd chance to go? I hope so.
How in the world can you retrieve all those collars in only 5 hours time, and how did he get the collars on the elk in the first place? They don't come when he calls do they?
Shame you didn't get a chance to fly without wings. I have thousands of hours in single engine helicopters such as the one you show in the pix and there is no greater joy than driving one around for a fuel load.
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