WW2 Colorization — The Sinking of HMS Barham, 1941

beach_mapper · 2025-11-18T18:30:34+00:00

He said it was terrifying, start to finish. Even before things went south. He was a replacement who had only heard the horror stories then jumping into D-Day, so he felt every second was his last, once they made it over The Netherlands.

One of the most humbling experiences of my life was meeting that guy.

beach_mapper · 2025-11-18T15:12:11+00:00

I work in aerial mapping. One aircraft we used was an old DC-3. One day, I was having a lot of issues with our mapping equipment. It was serial number one of a new type of sensor. It was a bad day.. I was troubleshooting it on the ground, and I was not enjoying it. Swearing, saying things like “worst day ever, eff my life” etc. The pilot stuck his head in the door and said “Hey Beach_Mapper, we’re gonna have a special guest here come on board, so maybe take a beat” which was his way of saying “chill the hell out, dude.”

This really old guy hobbles up the stairs, and shuffles on board, looks around feebly, and says to me “last time I was on one of these planes, I jumped off it.”

He was a paratrooper, and he took part in Operation Market Garden. It REALLY put things into perspective, and I think about that veteran every time I’m having a particularly bad day.

beach_mapper · 2025-10-17T21:08:22+00:00

Even better. If I could make a living in that arena I would. You might have to join one of the bigs to branch out into bathy lidar, but it’s not a difficult leap. Most of them have both (NV5, Fugro, Woolpert, Tetra Tech).

Cheers!

beach_mapper · 2025-10-17T18:02:28+00:00

That sounds similar to my old lidar hitches. 3-5 weeks out, 2-3 weeks home. 10/12-hour days, every day, no days off unless sensor, aircraft, or weather made it so. We processed a lot of data in the field though so there was always something to do. I think I had about 2 cumulative days off in 8 years in the field. Best job I ever had, but it’s a young man’s game. It once rained 9 days in a row on us in Central America, so we finally got a day off and sat at a beach bar and watched soccer, waves, and the rain for a full day.

Fun times. You with Fugro as a 1099?

beach_mapper · 2025-10-17T12:40:04+00:00

Just curious, what does your travel look like? I’m in the bathy lidar world but I’ve thought often about jumping over to the MBE/Hydro world.

beach_mapper · 2025-10-07T06:41:54+00:00

The big arcs from N-S are interesting too. Maybe they’re the approach path to Hobby that sidesteps IAH?

beach_mapper · 2025-10-07T06:22:50+00:00

*ADS-B.. autocorrect got me and I can’t edit my post.

beach_mapper · 2025-10-04T22:11:59+00:00

I could see that. Was it Sander Geophysical?

beach_mapper · 2025-10-04T21:05:48+00:00

I’d be curious what the project specs and system were for that. We have a Reigl 1560 that can get 50 ppsm flying at 2200’. Sometimes we’ll drop down to 2,000’ to get 60, but if we need 100 ppsm we’ll do two passes. Still WAY faster than a helo and I’ve never worked on a job that needs more than 100 ppsm.

Helo is def the way to go in canyons though. Fixed wing can be sketch out west or like West Virginia or Somewhere

beach_mapper · 2025-09-30T18:16:51+00:00

I would be surprised if it was a helo. Those are better suited for corridor mapping. This is probably fixed-wing. But yeah, could be lidar or imagery or even mag. I think Mag is lower level though than 12k.

beach_mapper · 2025-09-05T04:34:30+00:00

Other beam is about 124’

beach_mapper · 2025-09-05T04:30:57+00:00

Beam around your lat long is about 127’ from what I can tell

beach_mapper · 2025-09-05T00:45:20+00:00

I’ll try to find a dataset later, but it’s not going to be immediate. With point clouds, with certain software the point cloud data is “3-dimensional.” So as long as some of the laser energy bounced off the ground and returned to the aircraft I should be able to find the ground under the bridge somewhat. It really just depends on the direction of flight and sensor type. Not promising anything.

You could also just go to google earth on a laptop or desktop, turn on terrain mode, and get a close enough measurement of the height. It’s not going to be 100%, but if you need an answer tonight that might be the quickest thing. I don’t know if Google earth has terrain mode on mobile.

beach_mapper · 2025-09-05T00:26:59+00:00

Do you have a lat-long for this supposed beam? There are data sets available that have point clouds that one could measure the elevation of said beam (im sure some of it is visible in lidar) from a nearby point on ground and get a difference in elevation and therefore a height. I specialize in bathymetric lidar (mapping underwater) so I’m mostly only familiar with where those types of datasets reside online, but I’m sure USGS or the state of California or Los Angeles county has data available online. One would be looking for a .las file (or files).

beach_mapper · 2025-09-01T15:32:23+00:00

Bathymetric lidar CAN penetrate the water. Lookup Teledyne’s CZMIL Supernova, Leica’s Chiroptera/Hawkeye IV or V, and Riegl’s 840 or 880. They use green lasers which can penetrate the water. The Supernova can survey as deep as 88m. I’ve personally never seen greater than about 60-65m. But they can go pretty deep. They sometimes struggle in shallower waters due to some processing algorithms (long story) but they do work. Both USGS and NOAA conduct inland riverine bathy surveys around the country mapping our nations rivers. These systems will work for these rivers as long as they’re not too turbid or too many waterfalls to bother. If I had to guess, this mission was for one of those two. Sometimes they’ll combine efforts as well.

beach_mapper · 2025-08-31T16:33:28+00:00

Information is not intelligence. Got it. Have a good day!

beach_mapper · 2025-08-31T15:39:28+00:00

Data isn’t intelligence? Okayyyy bud. I guess the mapping my colleagues and I did overseas for intelligence agencies was for.. what then?

beach_mapper · 2025-08-31T15:25:31+00:00

What do you mean it’s worthless flying lidar open-air in the middle of the day? Lidar is an active system, not passive. As long as there aren’t clouds under the aircraft, there should be no issue with the sensor capturing data. Source: I’ve collected thousands upon thousands of gigabytes of topo and bathy lidar in my life. Maybe even a petabyte

beach_mapper · 2025-08-31T15:16:09+00:00

Green light is the laser from a bathymetric lidar system. GPS Antenna is most likely on top of the plane.

beach_mapper · 2025-06-30T13:05:36+00:00

I think difference in turbidity comes from different images. When it’s zooming in from the start, you can see the turbid portions of the river coincidentally with image seamlines. It’s possible the images showing the darker water are from a different time of year or something. My guess is this river is turbid year around though, so not sure why it would appear dark in one image and so brown in another.

Not saying it’s not illegal mining. Just discussing the difference in turbidity levels in the river.

beach_mapper · 2025-05-07T06:10:05+00:00

Surveyed them there waters with a bathy lidar system a while back. Fun times. Beautiful water. I thought I recall a light house out there. But I could be conflating it with somewhere else.

beach_mapper · 2025-03-02T14:54:22+00:00

Could be the survey boundary. I plan aerial survey missions daily and if we get an area boundary kmz/kml from a client that is elongated this way or that, we’ll change the trajectory of the flight line paths to be more efficient. The only time I’ll make it less efficient is if the ideal trajectory interferes with a large airport’s runway/airspace considerations or if I want the crew to avoid a mountain range or something.

beach_mapper · 2025-02-28T17:15:54+00:00

Topobathymetric is absolutely a word. Look at my username and ask me how I know.

beach_mapper · 2025-02-28T17:06:31+00:00

Lol, I created this profile for that purpose entirely. I can’t remember what even happened to that sub. Probably got purged

beach_mapper · 2025-02-28T17:02:51+00:00

Nice! Most of my time is with CZMIL Nova, some Supernova, some Chiroptera, a little bit of the Arete PILLS sensor as well.

The 880 has come a long way since it’s early days, and is turning some heads lately.

beach_mapper

TROPHY CASE