Cape York field log: logistics, permits, and working with community.

A short field log from a recent mobilisation north of Coen - mostly the parts that don't show up in a flight plan.

Mobilising a drone program into Cape York is rarely a same-week call. The road in is long, fuel is dear, and the work usually involves people whose schedules and protocols sit outside the project Gantt chart. None of that is a problem - it's the brief.

§ 01Approvals before equipment

Land access and community contact happen before the gear gets loaded. Council, Traditional Owner organisations, station managers - the order varies, but the principle doesn't. A flight that's technically legal but socially clumsy isn't a flight worth making.

§ 02Carry redundancy, expect heat

• Two batteries are one. Carry more.
• Cooling between flights matters - tropical surface temperatures cook electronics.
• Sat communications. The PLB lives on the operator, not in the vehicle.
• Print the flight plan. The screen will fail at the worst time.

The pace up here is the pace. Trying to compress it just produces bad data and tired people.

§ 03What ends up in the deliverable

The aerial data is half of what a Cape York project produces. The other half is the conversations, the contact list, and the relationships built along the way. Programs that come back next year run faster because of the work done this year.