Beginning next week, residents of Soldotna and Kenai may notice a plane marked with CGG flying in a grid pattern.
Project manager Amanda Heydorn says the Canadian geoscience company’s plane will be used to collect and record subsurface measurements in the local area and the Cook Inlet.
Heydorn: “We’re flying a fixed wing aircraft and it’ll be flying a grid pattern, which means that we’ll be flying in one direction, we’ll move over about 500 meters and fly back in the next direction and kind of continue on in that way. It’s an airplane that will be about 500 feet above the ground and doesn’t have anything towed or being pulled behind it.”
CGG is a contractor and is therefore not allowed to release the name of the company who hired them or the specific project the subsurface measurements will be used for.
The same sort of mapping by CGG was done last year in the area of Sterling.
Equipment testing and survey operations are scheduled to begin May 4 and last through June 15 depending on if weather conditions are clear enough to complete the work.
Heydorn says the plane, crew, and survey equipment will be based out of the Homer Airport because the Kenai and Soldotna airports were booked up during the times CGG needed.