All points collected but were not finished yet.

The day started off very smoothly, having gotten into a rythym and with a few houses left to capture or verify. We also discussed our project and brainstormed a couple of ideas that we had in mind. This was the first official discussion as a group having agreed on what we will do it on.

We finished collecting our areas' points by around 11am. We thought this meant we could take an early lunch but that was a negative. Instead, we helped extend the entire study area of Alaska further on into the Lusaka community. This went on until about 12:30pm... lunch time!

After lunch, we did differential GPS on the Viva premises. Differential GPS is an enhancement to Global Positioning System that provides improved location accuracy, from the 15-meter nominal GPS accuracy to about 10 cm in case of the best implementations. This insanely high accuracy level is mainly due to the fact that the GPS can talk to about 18 satellites at once therefore resulting in triangulation of locational data on a whole other level to occur.

A struggle that we encountered whilst performing the differential GPS was ensuring a clear line of sigh between the GPS and the satellites ahead. Without clear line of site, accuracy levels drop significantly. Our accuracy leves ranged between 1-2m while clear lines of sight usually range between 5-10mm. Some advice would be to:

1) Let someone tall hold the GPS rod. That way, the rod can be lifted above objects that block the line of site.

2) Wait a while before capturing the point. The accuracy levels usually increase within about 2 minutes of placing the rod at the required location.

After a successful day of finishing capturing our areas' points as well as performing the differential GPS collection, we all left with big smiles on our faces.

We wait with anticipation for the final trip to Alaska.

Alaskan Assimilators signing out.