Initial Over Water Observations

This zone border covers over 2,000 square miles

Here we go.  I flew this morning to the initial spot to get some work done finally.  Very far away from here - no man's land for sure.  I was prepared to land and spend a couple of days camping and hiking, but this early, nowhere yet safe to land.  The one lake which I had hoped to land on was still 80% ice.  This lake is so large that there were sections I could have landed, but when the wind changes, you are in trouble.  The whole mass shifts and you would probably be locked in. 

Going to wait another week or so before I go back.

Spent an hour in mid altitude flying there over the ocean, over water/melting ice observation, then went low and scouted some beaches at about 50 to 100 feet AGL.  Here is a video clip (click here).

It is spectacular.  You can't imagine how big this territory is.  You look at these pictures and you are looking across over 50 miles, just this zone, not even to the horizon.  These areas are massive, it is hard to put into words.  Just at this spot, you see in the picture borders covers over 2,000 square miles.  Believe me, I measured it on Google Earth.

This sequence is fantastic.  And without the polarized lenses, which I had left in the back of the plane, smart.  I still cold photograph pretty deep though.  How do I know how deep the water is?  This:

What is astounding is that the camera is picking up the bottom on the auto-focus.  Of course I have it set to the single focus point that is the smallest (one square) and in the center of the viewfinder.  It is actually diving underwater!  Note the icebergs are out of focus, this because of the strong zoom I am using, it is looking right down past them underwater.  The more out of focus the icebergs are, the deeper the water.  All foreground stuff blurs out.  Have to try and figure out those ratios - a good way to get water depth of uncharted waters from the air. 

Original photo, note the icebergs in the foreground are out of focus because with this strong zoom,
 the auto-focus is dialed in on the floor of the ocean below

Not sure how deep this water is in this sequence of pics, but at least 20 to 30 feet, maybe 40 to 50....or more?   I hope to find out . I will land when the ice is all out and I have a water depth finder in the cockpit with tranducer on the bottom of the right float.  I think it goes to 200 feet depths, so more than enough.

These are both the same photos, the bottom one with special effects to bring up the detail of the ocean bottom.

Special tools used in rendering this photo to bring up the ocean floor include brightness,contrast, sharpness, color, shadows and noise reduction effects.  This water may in fact be in excess of 50 feet deep and this with no polarization - which is yet to come.

Boy, this is all definitely the proverbial looking for a needle in a haystack.  BUT, if you don't put your line in the water, you'll never catch a fish.  Here is the video at low altitude combing the some of the gravel beaches - (click here). 

I also have an outside wing camera shot of this, will download soon.

Below is a sequence of photos which show how dwarfed we are up here:





That's really not me. It's a proportionally accurate cartoon plane I drew to show scale of this place.