Our first flight
From Hayden:
Today was finally the day we got in the air. Yesterday we had to call off the launch of our two para-motors due to some shaky weather. This morning we were all up before 6am, waiting on standby for the weather conditions to become right for flying.
After a lot of waiting Cedar took off from our makeshift runway, which is on a small clearing in the oil palm concession. I was acting as the tower for the flight. I was up in our fire spotting tower with a couple radios and a high powered scope to keep track of our pilots.
Cedar flew over the concession and got some excellent aerial photos of the forest destruction, and the native forest that borders the oil palm area. He also got a pretty sweet aerial shot of our camp. Though, after taking a look at the photo, we all realized that we need to do a little cleanup of the construction materials lying around camp.
An hour and a half later Cedar touched down. It was a great first flight. He didn't spot any peatland fires, but he only saw a fraction of the oil palm concession. Tomorrow Cedar, and our other pilot JJ, intend on flying much farther into the forest clearing in order to spot and illegally set peatland fires.
That's all the updates I have for now. It's still hot here, there are still a lot of bugs, and every day a cold beer is sounding better and better.
Comments
For a number of us who are not there to witness firsthand the destruction of Indonesia's forests and the excellent work the Greenpeace team is doing on the ground, this blog and the updates are very helpful in understanding the whole issue and at the same time inspiring us and the rest of the world to do something and spread the word about it.
Great photos too! It's amazing what paramotors/paragliding can do and how it can be useful to helping save the forests of Indonesia.
Wishing all of you well. Dodge those mosquitos!
Cheers!
Posted by: Roda | November 1, 2007 5:08 PM