Boresight and lever arm

[mggr]

Ensure we get the boresight data promptly and that all necessary lever arm measurements are taken.

[mggr]

Measurements of instrument position taken by Sterling Surveys. The report is now available and will be placed on the wiki.

There was no time (& weather window) for a boresight in the UK prior to departing on Jan 19 for the Ethiopia campaign. Instead, an interim boresight is to be taken in Ethiopia:

We have identified a potential boresight ('type') location 15km from the ADIS IGS GPS receiver. It was our intention to collect data from this site today but have been prevented from flying by the sudden requirement to have special military clearance, despite already having having full CAA clearance. We hope to fly tomorrow with a military observer and will send a blue ray of the boresight ('type') data to you at the earliest opportunity. 

If you wish to preview the potential calibration site (eg. on GoogleEarth) the coordinates of the four lines are:

9d 2' 34.17"N 38d 38' 01.49"E, 9d 1' 32.06"N 38d 37' 51.92"E

9d 2' 14.59"N 38d 37' 26.59"E, 9d 2' 04.38"N 38d 38' 27.41"E

9d 2' 38.00"N 38d 37' 38.46"E, 9d 1' 29.15"N 38d 38' 22.49"E

9d 2' 34.00"N 38d 38' 27.67"E, 9d 1' 38.90"N 38d 37' 19.73"E

The site is 17km from Bole International Airport (not on a direct flight path) and on the edge of Addis Ababa. We hope that our arrangements will be sufficient to obtain the required military okay for this and our other sites. A sitrep of the ARSF's activities to date in Ethiopia will be issued by either Pete or me very shortly.
Best wishes
Gary

(reply)

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the update :)

Gary Llewellyn wrote:
> We have identified a potential boresight ('type') location 15km from
> the ADIS IGS GPS receiver. It was our intention to collect data from
> this site today but have been prevented from flying by the sudden
> requirement to have special military clearance, despite already having
> having full CAA clearance. We hope to fly tomorrow with a military
> observer and will send a blue ray of the boresight ('type') data to
> you at the earliest opportunity.

GPS locality sounds great :)  We'll presumably need to download that? (we have the details from Bill's email)  If so, could you let us know the times after you've flown?

> If you wish to preview the potential calibration site (eg. on GoogleEarth) the coordinates of the four lines are:

I had a peek on google maps [1] and that appears on there to be over a few fields and a small wood, so I guess google's positioning may be a little off.  It looks fairly flat, which will be essential if we don't have a DEM :)

Other key things are some straight-ish edges (roads are good), some along-track, some across track.  Other distinct features, like the trees, will help with positioning/rotation.

The straight edges help a lot with detecting and correcting eagle timing errors, especially if there's a little gust of wind (or dodging a missile from an angry military) that causes a wobble as you're going over an along-track straight feature.

Looking forward to the blu-ray - hope the clearance goes smoothly :)

Cheers,

Mike.

[1] for the interested, the first line was:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=9+2+34.17+N,+38+38+01.49+E&ie=UTF8&ll=9.041411,38.64913&spn=0.051452,0.080338&t=h&z=14&iwloc=addr&om=0
 to
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=9+2+32.06N,+38+38+51.92+E&ie=UTF8&ll=9.046496,38.647671&spn=0.051451,0.080338&t=h&z=14&iwloc=addr&om=0

[mggr]

Interim boresight data arrived Jan 30 on blu-ray. Read successfully, Anthony and Ben looking at it.