Posts about stuff relating to airports
Introducing (and then farewelling) 🦅✈️🤖
Much of my excitement associated with ChatGPT came from my early experimentation and the “success” of our first actual project. I’ve posted a few times now about Python programming, and in December, it helped me take it to a new level.
‘Cause, we built a bot. And then Twitter killed it and then I deleted its account.
Header image: Tara Winstead (via Pexels)
Non-Strike Wildlife Events: Just as Important as a Strike?
Eagle-eyed* readers may have noticed the new menu item at the top. This new page outlines my PhD research project which is looking into wildlife strike reporting practices and standards. By pure coincidence, a couple of my favourite Youtube channels have just featured wildlife-related aviation events that did not involve collisions with birds. These types of events go to heart of my motivation for taking on my particular research question.
Header image: Janiere Fernandez (via Pexels)
COVID-19 Bird Strike Update #4
For quite a while now, I’ve been tracking the impact of the COVID-19 air traffic downturn on wildlife strike rates. Early warnings highlighted the potential for and early indications were that there was a risk of increased wildlife strike rates while the industry returned to the skies. Since then, a lot more research has been done and presented. I presented my full year 2020 findings at the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group’s (AAWHG) 2021 Webinar Series last October with the video going online last week.
Check it out here…
Header image: Asad Photo Maldives (via Pexels)
Which Pipit to Report?
I was doing some research using the ATSB’s wildlife strike data file and came across a number of interesting little data artifacts. My goal was to maximise the number of reports with standard species names (common names, not the Latin) and this required a combination of Python programming and manual mapping.
And I found some interesting things, like the Richard’s Pipit.
Image credits: Richard’s Pipit (JJ Harrison via Wikipedia) & Australiasian Pipit (Sommerdrought via Wikipedia)
Vegetation & Habitat Control
I've been doing a bit of clearing of land at my airport to make way for a new fence. We've had to expand our borders to accommodate those new instrument approach procedures I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Given that the airport is in "the bush", this meant knocking over a few trees to construct the new fence and make the new airside area completely manageable using tractors and mowers. So, we broke out the relatively cute D-6 dozer and set about clearing the new airport boundary and land.
Header image: Skitterphoto (via Pexels)