Friday November 9th
Early in the week, I had an altercation with a small animal. Small as
it was it took out my front spoiler, grill and damaged the radiator.
With my car in the smash repair shop for the duration, Glenn Schneider
kindly offered to drive me inland in his rental car to re-survey
potential
inland
re-location sites. We opted for locations that were reachable in
practical driving times and using a sighting scope coupled with an
accurate inclinometer we surveyed sites that were "not too good."
That is, sites with 9 degree horizons. The idea
behind this
was that if we relocated, we'd arrive relatively late where we expected
that any places with obviously low horizons would be taken.
We
chose sites with a horizon high enough that it would cast doubt in the
mind of anyone selecting a site who didn't have an accurate device for
measuring altitude. During the many hours on the road, Bengt
Alfredsson rode shotgun in the front passenger seat and I had a mobile
office set up in the back seat. Crises that day included
overcoming difficulties regarding the launch of our balloon Eclipser1,
sorting out the helicopter situation at Port Douglas and hire of chairs
for the Port Douglas site.
We were surveying potential inland relocation sites. I'd
hired
Weatherwatch Australia and had them feeding me comparative evaluations
of the weather prospects in each region.
Following the site surveying, I produced and circulated this
map for the people taking weather advice through me :
Underlying map: © Google Maps
