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Exercise 1: The Andean region (Part 2)
 
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The aircraft that crashed was a Fairchild Hiller FH-227D, a turboprop airliner of the Uruguayan Air Force. It departed from Montevideo airport (Uruguay) on 12 October, stopped in Mendoza (Argentina) due to bad weather conditions over the mountains, and then continued to travel across the Andes on 13 October. The aircraft made a southern detour to avoid the highest mountains. From Mendoza it flew southward to Malargue (Argentina), then turned west and started to cross the Andes towards the town of Curicó (Chile). From there, it was supposed to head North to reach Santiago de Chile.

Here are the positions of the various cities:

Mendoza: 32°50’S 68°47’W
Malargue: 35°30’S 69°35’W
Curicó: 34°59’S 71°14’W
Santiago: 33°23’S 70°47’W

The fuselage of the crashed aircraft was found in position 34°45'39"S 70°17'38"W.  
 
a) Tracking the aircraft using the Annotation Tool (LEOWorks 3)
 
Introduce the planned flight trajectory onto the satellite image using the Annotation Tool. Carefully draw a polyline starting from Mendoza down to Malargue, across the Andes to Curicó, and then northwards to Santiago.

Annotate the turning points with their appropriate names. Mark the exact impact position of the aircraft. Place a small circle on this location. Afterwards, trace a likely track ending where the aircraft’s fuselage was found.

Save your annotated image as MERIS_FR_20070318_321_annotated.tif or MERIS_FR_20070318_432_annotated.tif, depending on which file you used.
 
 
b) Tracking the aircraft using the GIS Tool
 
You can also track the aircraft using the GIS Tool. Make a layer “Flight Track”, select Polyline and carefully draw the line between the 4 positions (Mendoza, Malargue, Curio and Santiago). Make another theme layer and name it “Location of Accident”. Select Point and click on the exact position of the location of the crashed aircraft.

When generating/saving the layers, make sure you save them in the same directory where you are working.

8. What could have caused the pilot to make such a serious navigational error ?

9. Since no emergency message was sent, what did this entail for the organisation of the rescue operations?


 
 
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Lost in the Andes!
Lost in the AndesIntroductionBackground
Exercises
Exercise 1: The Andean regionExercise 2: Vegetation cover (NDVI) (for university students)Exercise 3: The geographical setting of the accidentExercise 4: The route back to civilisationExercise 5: Expedition “Alive!”Exercise 6: A multidisciplinary workshop
Eduspace - Software
LEOWorks 3LEOWorks 4 (MacOS)LEOWorks 4 (Windows)LEOWorks 4 (Linux)
Eduspace - Download
Lost_in_the_Andes.zip
More on the Andes tragedy
Wikipedia summary
 
 
 
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