Activity Day: Laying GCP's at Litchfield Mine

Laying New GCP's at Litchfield Mine 

On April 12th between the hours of 3 and 6 pm, Jo Hupy's spring UAS class, with the guidance of Kreamer Company Employee, Nicholas Kreamer, laid out 23 ground control points throughout the Litchfieled materials mine.  The mine is run and operated by the Kreamer Company, a native Wisconsin construction contractor that does construction throughout the country.  The weather was not cold for this activity, but the wind was rather intense, and was gusting hard enough to knock the hard hat right off your head, which happened to multiple occasions to multiple students.   

The intent of this activity was to lay sturdy ground control points there that could stand the tests of time, as well as highly intensive industrial activity.  The control points were constructed by the class the week before at the Hupy household, where students used spray paint on 2 ft x 2ft squares to make to create easily distinguishable colored patterns on top of the individual pieces.  The desgines made were two triangles that met in the middle of the plaque, each with a bright neon yellow color for a fill.  Each piece was also giving a letter identifier, which was also spray painted on, ranging from A to W.  

Lastly, each piece had four wholes drilled into it so that it could be nailed flat into the ground.  This assured the positions would remain consistent and not be moved by weather elements or the heavy machinery which would be operating in the surrounding area.  Just as well, because of all the heavy mobile machinery that operated at the mine, it was necessary to to have the control points of be made of a pliable material, so that they would not break if they were run over.  The material selected, as such, was a durable plastic, that if laid flat, would not break of become warped if ran over by the machinery on sight. 

below, in figure 1, is a map of the GCP locations relative to imagery that was captured in October 2015.

figure 1: GCP marker locations

This activity will allows for missions to me conducted repetidly at this location without having to continually relay GCP makers, making it much more less logisticaly difficult going forward for UAS classes of the future. Just as well, A fast and easy way to create home made GCPs was created in the process, which could be prove to be useful when out of school in a professional setting.