Today was a test day, to go through the PALS/Twin Otter flight operations, and for the ground teams to get familiar with the soil and vegetation sampling equipment and the field site locations.

Richard (pilot) and Andreas getting the Twin Otter and PALS instrumentation ready.

Test Flight

We were at the airport by 8 am. The plane was outside being prepared by Richard and Dave (pilots). Andreas worked on the antenna external calibration target while Seth and Ian checked out the PALS electronics.

After the pre-flight briefing, take-off occurred as planned at about 10 am. The plane climbed and headed northwest towards Lake Manitoba for high and low altitude calibrations over water, and then turned southward to test maneuvers and data collection over a few of the designated field site flight lines. At 11:30 am the plane landed back at Winnipeg and we went through the debrief. Andreas checked the data back at the hotel (downloaded onto a thumb drive).

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