| Summary: | Progress Code: completed Statement: See the report for further information. The values provided in spatial coverage are approximate only. AUSLIG is now known as Geoscience Australia. Comments and Recommendations Camera Equipment All camera equipment should be fully checked and made operational prior to departure. Although a pre-season helicopter trial was carried out with the Zeiss camera, none was carried out with the Linhof. Several new cables had to be made or borrowed and the pilot's display needed repairing while on the voyage south. The wiring is relatively messy and complicated. A wiring harness would be less cluttered and help make the camera easier and faster to install in the helicopter. The flight PC is dated and needs to be replaced. The backup battery in the existing PC failed prior to departure and the CMOS could no longer identify the hard drive. This rendered the PC useless for the duration of voyage 4 and LANDINFO's backup PC had to be used in its place. Further consideration needs to be made into the suitability of the Linhof camera with the 180mm lens for penguin surveys. At a flying height of 1,000m the photo scale is about 1:5,500 and this is only barely suitable. A proposed increase in the flying height from 1,000m to 1,500m will clearly reduce the scale to a point that will render the photography useless for counting penguins. A better camera, longer lens and/or lower flying height need to be considered for future penguin surveys. Flying Hours Available There was some confusion within voyage management about the budget available for flying hours associated with the aerial photography of the penguin rookeries. This did cause some problems and it would be an advantage if this issue could be resolved prior to departure. Regardless of the problem however voyage management did give the aerial photography program its full support with every opportunity to fly being made available. Locating the Tide Gauges Many hours were wasted trying to locate the bottom mounted tide gauge moorings. Accurate ...
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