Well, it’s been an interesting couple of days in Anchorage. Observant followers may be wondering why I am still in Anchorage instead of up on the north slope. Unfortunately, there has been a delay in our SeaHunter flights. This delay is connected to waiting for the last flight permissions to fall into place. I have been working with UAS for several years, and for some reason this part is always something that comes down to the last minute. There are many reasons for this, but I won’t get into those here… Ultimately, the best we can do is come up with contingency plans.
The airspace map for our near-shore operations area. The orange cone represents the area between Kuparuk Airport and the offshore warning area.
To provide a little more detail, unmanned aircraft flights over the United States, just like manned aircraft flights in that area, are required to follow the rules and policies established by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In the case of these SODA flights, things were generally very interesting, as we’d be conducting part of our flight operations over “international” waters (more than 12 nm offshore), and part of our flight over US territory. This means that we’d need to marry a variety of different flight permissions together in order to make the operation happen. While many of these obstacles were overcome, the one that has become tricky is the transit between Kuparuk airport and the offshore warning area (W-220), indicated by the orange area in the image above. This is airspace where the FAA normally requires unmanned aircraft operators to keep visual contact with their aircraft. Unfortunately, this is not possible for 12 nm, so the University of Alaska had put in a waiver request for “beyond visual line of sight” (or BVLOS) flights to get to W-220. Unfortunately, that has not been approved, and we’re now moving towards contingencies.
An airplane taking off from Merrill Field, as seen from my hotel room on the 8th floor. Not sure if this one would have cleared the hotel (16 stories) without the turn it is making!
So, in the meantime, I have been spending my days in hotel rooms in Anchorage, keeping up with work and fielding phone calls and emails about the challenges outlined above. All in all, it hasn’t been terrible, but at the same time it is not what I anticipated that I would be doing. Generally, doing something other than you were expecting to do makes the days go by at a snail’s pace, which has been the case here. While I only left Colorado four days ago, it feels like I have been here for weeks… At least I have a good view of aircraft taking off and landing at Merrill Field here in Anchorage. Amazing that they have this 16 story hotel within 3500 feet of the end of the runway!
Tomorrow I will be going up to Oliktok Point. Cory Dixon, who was supposed to join me, will be traveling to Fairbanks instead, to help with integration efforts there. While things are not where we wanted them to be at the current time, I am doing my best to remain optimistic about the potential for flights starting sometime early next week. Stay tuned!
