Jaime and Ana’s First Flight
With Ana we flew today during 1 hr and 20 min over our Chahuilco site and SW, and also on the way back on the SE. It is very interesting and exciting to see the landscape as a choroy!! Impressive sense!
Aerial View © Photo N Lemieux
We tried t fly in parallel lines separated by 2 km and 1 km height. It seemed that the ground covered was still too small, but the cloud ceiling did not let us go higher.
We could pick up 3 choroyes, two of them were collared in INIA (disappeared since then!) and now they were like 50 km S!! The third bird was located by Ana yesterday in Chahuilco, and thus, today it was like 10 km S from yesterday (no wander, these guys move lots!). All these figures need to be confirmed.
The noise and interference was terrible. Also, things happens quite fast and it is a challenge to change frequencies with one finger, listen, look in the GPS and write were you think you are. It is very hard to figure out and have a sense about where you are in the 3D and from where the signal is coming. Some signals appeared and disappeared repeatedly (perhaps the birds were moving) We placed a collar on the airport and this was picked up from at least 2 m away. Next time we fly we will have to figure out well, given a known collar, how the reception from different highs and distance behave. We could also find the signals of 2 of the collars that are on the ground, but not found yet.
I thought it was going to be easier.
We will have bad weather during the next week and will have to wait until we flight again.
I am very sleepy for having taken a Dropamine type of pill! (which was not necessary, because it was a very smooth flight).
