Equipment
Commited to grow with technology
One of our beliefs here at Oracle Geoscience is that failure to take advantage of leading edge technology will quickly shift you from the front to the back of the pack! When we decided to get make the move from just being employees of a survey company to actually owning our own, we waited for the right opportunity. Following the belief that high quality data starts with high quality equipment we took advantage of some recent critical changes made in the fields of airborne magnetic compensation, data acquisition and navigation.
New advances in the world of Airborne Magnetic Compensation
This spring at the largest ever Prospectors and Developers convention held in Toronto, Canada, RMS Instruments unveiled the new generation of their already industry standard magnetic compensator packaged together their newly designed data acquisition system.
The DAARC500 uses AARC500 compensation technology which has now replaced the older AADCII technology currently being used by many airborne companies. The marriage of this new technology together with the extremely versatile data acquisition system will provide Oracle with system capable of growing with their needs for many years to come.
We've gone a step further with the DAARC500 by equipping it with a second screen. This second LCD screen uses "Touch" technology and has been installed in the aircraft instrument panel. The purpose was to be able to have the operator sit up front acting as a second set of eyes for the captain while at the same time giving him full access to monitor data acquisition ensuring quality control.
For detailed information on this new technology please follow the RMS Intruments link above.
GPS Receiver Developments
This year also provided us with an opportunity to take advantage of advances made in the navigation and GPS positioning world. Novatel has just introduced a new receiver called the OEMV-3. This is a Triple Frequency Receiver providing L1/L2 and Glonass positioning. This new generation of GPS receiver will continue to support us well into the future through it's ability to use the new L5 signals as soon as they become available.
The OEMV-3 will also allow us to support peripheral devices such as an aircraft attitude tracking Inertial Measurement Unit. (IMU) Please feel free to click on the OEMV-3 link above for more information.
New Guidance System
The field of Airborne Guidance also underwent an upgrade in the form of the newly released GUIA from AgNav. The compact intelligent moving map colour display was incorporated into the dash of our aircraft providing the pilot with more ergonomic display. Some contractors elect to clamp their displays onto the dash leaving cables to dangle dangerously close to throttle controls etc. As owner / operators we vowed to spare no expense to create a safe comfortable working environment. The Guia interface also makes it easy for us to integrate digital elevation models into the system providing the pilot with a computer modeled drape surface to fly from. This surface virtually eliminates the error that occurs at tie line / traverse line intercepts allowing for much more robust tie line leveling.
Perfect Timing
All of these advancements have come this year after a relatively long drought in survey technology. The magnetic compensator AADCII for example was first introduced in 1988 and remained largely unchanged until the new generation was introduced recently in 2006. For many companies it's just too expensive to convert an entire fleet of aircraft over to the new technology and lose large amounts of capital tied up in now outdated systems. Oracle Geoscience has chosen to start their company now with these top of the line instruments which will prove to be the benchmark for many years to come.