[defrost]

There's a vlog on his channel on "Is it a boat or a plane?".

I threw that in more as it's a fun build (that sadly had a bit of a mishap this last weekend).

My background's more in modified STOL for geophysics | heli mustering .. which was all rather seat of the pants back in the day.

[happyjack]

That's crazy! There's actually currently a geophysics crew in my town doing a USGS project.

Which aircraft did you do STOL for?

[defrost]

I principally wrote geophysics software with some time spent in the hangers tag teaming with real mechanics while working for an Australian survey company that was ultimately sold to Fugro.

At time of sale we hade 14 airframes, mostly fixed wing aircraft, some helicopters, all modified for survey work (stinger tail booms, looped EM field detectors, under slung drones, etc) and a perfect 20+ year air saftey record which Fugro didn't maintain - they had two aircraft down and some loss of life within a few years of aquisition.

Many of the planes were older high wing twin engine types (Shrikes, etc) - my personal favorite that was bought and modified in my time there was a NZ Cresco 750 designed for crop dusting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_MO5Wfomks

Sadly, -KPY got totalled kissing a powerline that (presumeably) hadn't been mapped ahead of time.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/89273

We surveyed all of Fiji, most of Mali, NorWest India | Pakistan during the Pokhran-II | Chagai-I test exchanges, along with a great deal of other work about the globe.

[happyjack]

That is really neat! Thank you for sharing! Love hearing people's aviation stories.