Good afternoon everyone, my name is Lieutenant
Rick DeTriquet with the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps. I'm an aircraft commander and
instructor pilot on the NOAA King Air which is right behind us right now. It's a 350 CER
variant so it has the cargo door addition as well as the extended range tanks
for our missions. We'll do a little brief overview of the plane. It has two Pratt and
Whitney PT 6-60 alpha engines. They produce 1050 shaft horsepower each and four bladed props along
with the again the extended range tanks which gives us about 5,200 pounds of fuel that can
give us seven to eight hours of survey time. Fully pressurized retractable tricycle landing
gear has a beefed up landing gear for the heavier weights. We typically take off in the 15 to 16,000
pound range our max takeoff weight being 16,454 pounds. Like I said we can take quite a bit
of fuel. There's actually six different fuel tanks on the plane, the outboard main tanks,
the inboard auxiliary tanks, and then the extended range tanks which if any of you are
familiar with King Airs sitting in the back of the cell there so we can't carry any golf clubs.
Basically that's all taken out by fuel now. Some other cool things about the King
Air are the winglets on the outside for aerodynamic purposes, there's also,
it's a very low wing a pretty slim design. And like I mentioned it is the cargo
variant, so we have a large cargo door and that just helps unloading and loading and
setting up the mission equipment in the back. It also has a normal air stair door for normal
ingress and egress but the cargo door is super super helpful during uh during a mission
outfitting as well. Typical crew for us is two pilots up front we run an aircraft
commander and a co-pilot or pilot monitoring and in the back we run either one or two survey
operators. They're primarily responsible for starting the mission equipment starting the
cameras going looking at our the quality of our photos as well as the tasking at hand for
the day. So they are instrumental and we'll fly with either one or two of them in the back and
depending on the mission we'll also fly with another survey operator on the ground to
help speed up that data processing so we can get it get it out as quick as possible
so typical complements three to four people and two cameras in the back. This is our
typical setup for our coastal mapping and emergency response mission. They're fully gimbaled
set up with camera ports with retractable fog doors as well as optical grade glass that
allows us to to fly pressurized as well. The forward camera is an oblique camera so there
they can shoot out the port and starboard sides and the aft camera has a
nadir camera so it shoots, captures photos straight down. Now we can run
them simultaneously, or one at a time. So in typical emergency response fashion we'll fly with
both cameras firing shooting on both sides and straight down getting a triple wide swath which
is pretty efficient and allows us to collect a ton of photos even with just a single
pass. As you can see we we've done that uh several different hurricanes and also with
the most recent tornadoes in Nashville as well. but we'll talk a little bit more about the
mission. Typical flight profiles for us are 1500 feet to 10,500 feet depending on the
mission. Whether it's coastal mapping, normal coastal erosion assessment, we'll typically
fly up higher better image quality we can the higher we go we can get a little bit better image
quality. But if it's an emergency response mission we'll fly as low as 1500 feet just to get below
the clouds and be able to get those clear photos. In those cases it's essential to fly as slow
as we can. Our typical survey speeds are 170 knots is the sweet spot, but as we get into
those lower altitudes we'll try to slow down as much as possible. and our minimum indicated
speeds are typically 135 knots at that altitude. Otherwise we can pick a survey altitude in between
those and the sweet spot again is going to be 170 knots. We can capture different ports of
interest, different neighborhoods of interest, different coastlines, and we can really
zoom or focus in on areas of damage. Our primary emergency response mission is to
be the first responders after a storm comes by and fly straight to the area of max damage and
survey as many many passes as we can. Weather limiting, fuel limiting, traffic limiting, we'll
capture photos for five six sometimes seven hours. And as soon as we land the survey operator is
passing that that on to a ground support personnel and that data those photos are passed up to the
RSD - remote sensing division - where it can be utilized by all of our different stakeholders
for emergency response on scene or further on support work down the road as as that damage of
the hurricane progresses. You can see our two cameras here they're both the Applanix cameras
and they are our typical outfit for the mission. I've been in NOAA for eight years with
the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps. I went to a ship for two years, the NOAA
Ship Nancy Foster, and I had a blast doing all sorts of different dive ops, small boat
ops, survey ops. I loved it but I found out about the aviation side of NOAA and I had
to go see what that was about. So I applied, got accepted, went to flight school, and I
started flying the the NOAA Twin Otters which fly amazing missions fantastic missions.
But I found out about the King Air, and as pilots do I I wanted to fly another
plane and see what that was all about as well. So I've been flying the King Air for two years
now. It is a fantastic mission combining coastal mapping, GRAV-D, and emergency response and the
upcoming season we're also going to be flying snow survey as well. So a good mix of missions and
a very satisfying mission when you're able to to help out get on scene after storm. Whether
it's Hurricane Dorian or tornadoes in Nashville capture some very useful data to the protection
of personal life and property. Thanks everyone for joining us on the tour of the NOAA King Air,
hope you guys enjoy the rest of the tour of NOAA. Hi, I'm Lieutenant Coleen Conley from
Ellicot City, Maryland. I commissioned out of the Naval Academy in 2009 with a degree in
oceanography. I flew the P-3 Orion for the Navy for 10 years and transitioned to the NOAA Corps
in October 2019. Here at NOAA I'm an aviation safety officer and I fly the Beechcraft King
Air. Come on back, let's have a look inside So here we are in the back of the King
Air. The first thing you're going to notice are these two big cameras right here. We have both
an oblique and a nadir camera, which allows us to perform our primary mission sets. We take both
pre- and post-event imagery. Pre-event imagery occurs prior to hurricane season every year. We
fly the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, and around the U.S. territories in the Caribbean and collect
imagery of the coastline. This imagery will serve as a baseline, or standard for comparison, in
case a hurricane or tropical storm rolls through and then our post-event imagery, also known as
emergency response imagery, will be collected and then we can make comparisons to see what's
changed. This imagery is all publicly available online. That about covers our primary
mission sets, we can head up to the cockpit. Welcome to the cockpit. We typically fly these
missions with three people on board. We have a pilot in either seat up front and a sensor
operator who's controlling the camera in the back. Factors that affect this mission are sun angle
and tide windows. The tide windows are important because how high the water is will affect the
imagery that we're getting along the coastline. And sun angle is important because you don't
want long shadows cast when you're trying to collect imagery of the coastline. The left-hand
pilot is flying off of an ipad that's showing them where to fly. So crew resource management is
especially important here, because the right side pilot is going to be monitoring your airspace,
your traffic, making all the radio calls, setting the nav aids that sort of thing. So you
want to make sure everyone's working in unison to keep the aircraft safe at all times. We typically
fly around 5500 feet, lower if needed. We can't have any clouds below us which is a pretty
stringent requirement but makes sense because the clouds will show up in all of the imagery so
that's often a limiting factor for us. but that's the basic gist of how we fly our coastal mapping
missions. Thanks for joining me today for a tour of NOAA's Beechcraft King Air enjoy the rest
of your tour of the Aircraft Operations Center This is the NOAA King Air. It
collects pre- and post-storm imagery like this from Mexico Beach, Florida
before and after Hurricane Michael. The United States has 95,000 miles of shoreline.
These dynamic coastal regions are vulnerable to flooding, property destruction, and beach erosion
from severe weather and sea level change. Coastal areas rely on accurate elevation data to plan
and recover when hazardous situations arise. These communities depend on up-to-date information
for their management and resiliency planning. As part of its mission, NOAA's National Geodetic
Survey (NGS) provides an accurate consistent and current national shoreline. NGS's mean
high water line is considered the nation's official shoreline. It is used to create and
maintain NOAA nautical charts. These charts are used by commercial and recreational boaters to
navigate safely and avoid potential hazards. NGS's shoreline is also a crucial source for defining
our nation's boundaries and territorial limits. Remotely-sensed data from aircraft
is collected to map the shoreline. The use of aircraft-based sensors, such as
a digital camera and topobathy lidar system, allows large areas to be surveyed
in a short amount of time. Lidar, which stands for light detection and
ranging, is a remote-sensing method that uses a laser to measure distances to a surface. NGS uses
a unique type of sensor called topobathy lidar. It collects wide swaths of elevation data on both
land, or topography, and in shallow water areas, or bathymetry. Bathymetric data has historically
been difficult to acquire in these highly dynamic coastal zones. Since NOAA survey ships
cannot travel safely close to the shoreline, NGS's topobathy lidar system uses a green laser
that operates in a circular scan pattern to penetrate shallow water near the shore. The high
density point data is combined with GPS and other positional data to create precise 3d topographic
and bathymetric elevation models. NGS uses coastal elevation data to map the mean high water
shoreline, which is a tidally referenced boundary. The shoreline is verified using aerial imagery
that is collected along with the lidar data. Topobathy lidar data collected by NGS is
freely available from NOAA's Digital Coast to use for applications and tools to
support decision making in the coastal zone. Academic and research organizations use
coastal elevation lidar data to develop ocean and coastal models. These 3d models
help researchers understand ocean circulation. Elevation data is an important part of the model
because circulation is influenced by friction, which is related to the height of the sea floor.
Coastal engineers and scientists use elevation data to understand sediment movement, beach
erosion, and sediment budgets. This information is used to develop management plans to restore,
monitor, and maintain beaches in the coastal zone. Elevation data is also one of the most
important parameters for modeling inundation. Topobathy lidar data is especially valuable
due to its accuracy and its seamless transition from land to water. Coastal managers and
decision makers use visualization tools that incorporate these elevation models to
understand vulnerability, increase resilience, and develop hazard mitigation plans. These are
only a few of the many ways that elevation and shoreline data are being used to help keep
coastal communities safe and resilient. NOAA topobathy lidar data is a critical component for
meeting the challenges of an uncertain future.
