I’ve been watching the weather for weeks and there just hasn’t been a good day for flying.  It seems that it is either raining/snowing or the wind is just to much for flying safely.  This morning there was finally a break, so I started sending emails at about 7am to see if I could get everything arranged for a 9:30am flight.  I got permission from BCC Security, and from the Pittsfield Airport.

The only challenge is that it was pointed out by one of BCC’s Environmental Science professors that there is a great deal of bird activity in that area as of now.  Keeping that in mind, I began to hunt around for someone who could act as a visual observer for this flight.  Nathan in the library was able to, so he was my VO keeping an eye out for birds, airplanes (which we did see one get close as we are within 5 miles of Pittsfield airport) and any other wildlife or hazards.  Nathan did a good job and we didn’t have any issues, or any near issues even.  The only wildlife we saw kept pretty far away, except for some smaller birds that became interested as we started to land.  Check out the full video below.

After we accomplished our mission goals, to get some video as an initial “survey” of the swamp area, Nathan got the chance to have a test flight to get an idea of how the sticks work.  He did great and his video is below!

I’m looking forward to the next flight, but the way the weather looks who knows when that might be!