Several Air Attack refresher course have requested this spring I give 30-60 minute training sessions on this subject: Moving map topos in the cockpit with electronic overlays of GIS fire info . Also the International Aerial Firefighters conference in Anaheim (Feb 19-20) is trying to make spot for a presentation (not yet confirmed).
If anyone is interested in seeing overlayed firelines from last seasons fires, please contact me. I can show a demo on your computer remotely over the Internet using skype and my webcam (you don't need a webcam, just me).
On the communication front, I've had interesting discussions with the people who make the satellite phones and flight following in our planes. Latitude Tech says there is way to send data packets from the plane to ground through the satellite link. It is relatively slow & expensive, but might work. Just now I drew a sample fire perimeter on DeLorme Topo, and saved it to a .gpx file. The data file was less than 1KB in size - just a text listing of Lat-Longs. I will continue to investigate.
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About 8 years ago Tom Patterson, BLM and NPS in S. Cal was working on sending data via the BLM radio repeater system. He tried video and that locked up the system. I think that the map data, gpx or whatever program extension is used by Delorme or Maptech might be small enough to go over the VHF-FM radio. I'll have to check with the techs to see if that is doable and what additional equipment would be needed.
ReplyDeleteHere in Idaho BLM the FMOs are interested in having realtime maps beamed to them so they can start making plans/ decisions on emerging fires. The fire perimeter map would not even have to be overly detailed or accurate, a recording of the flight track might even be sufficient to get the ball rolling. The other big objective of the mapping system would be to send map data to the IC and they could send back to the ATGS or other ground supervisors graphical instructions like put a retardant line here - and draw a line.