Recently Aerodata signed a contract with a major French engineering company to provide a highly accurate, high density, digital terrain model (DTM) and ortho rectified color imagery of an area with a total surface area over 3000 sq km, covering the most northerly part of the Niger river in Mali, West Africa.

The aerial survey is aimed to capture the T0 situation of the project area. This information will then serve as an input for further engineering and design activities to construct a barrage and reservoir in the river.

Mid November Aerodata’s twin turbine Merlin 3A survey aircraft LX-PIX left its home base in Antwerp for this exiting mission located near the famous city of Timbuktu. On-board equipment consisted of Aerodata’s Vexcel Ultracam-D large format digital frame camera including an ultra high precision GPS-RTK navigation system for real time precise positioning of the imagery during flight.

The initial destination Bamako, Mali’s bustling capital, was reached in 1,5 day via Malaga (Spain) and Las Palmas (Canary Islands).

After successfully completing the required technical inspection by the Malinese civil aviation authorities, LX-PIX continued to its project base near the city of Mopti, right in the immense and splendid Niger inland delta. From there the crew conducted the productive missions at various flying altitudes, supported by own ground reference stations.

The excellent weather conditions in this period of the year allowed for very efficient data acquisition and great overall mission progress.

All data is being pre-processed in the field in order to evaluate the overall quality before mobilization of the aircraft to its next destination.