From a height of 3,500 feet, Prineville Reservoir looks a lot more like the Crooked River that initially ran through the area than the massive body of water that has become a recreational destination in recent years.
Because of multiple years of drought, the reservoir is just 10% full. And a group of 1980s Crook County High School graduates recently teamed up to not only capture a photo of it, but to launch a new aerial surveying enterprise.
Cindy Halcumb has enjoyed a 30-plus year career as a licensed surveyor, having built a client base primarily through word of mouth. Along the way, she met and married Keith Halcumb, who is a local Class of 81 graduate.
“He and all his buddies all joined the Navy,” she said, adding that they ultimately went their separate ways, thereafter, visiting and living in other places. But as the retirement years neared, a group of them found their way back to Prineville.
The Halcumbs moved back a couple years ago, building a home near Prineville Reservoir that occupies land just above the boat ramp. At that time, the droughts hadn’t taken their toll.
“That is where we fell in love with the reservoir,” Cindy said, noting that they have a nice view of the entire body of water. Shortly after settling into their new home, the waters started receding.
Meanwhile, one of Keith’s high school and Navy friends, Roger Lyle, and his wife, Lori Gagermeier Lyle, likewise found their way back to Prineville. Post-Navy, Roger had become a helicopter pilot.
“We were just talking one day, and he said he would love to learn the fixed-wing game,” Cindy recalls. So, Roger pursued a fixed-wing add-on to his license, a process that just recently reached fruition.
That decision, as it turned out, would spark an idea that would later lead to launching a new aerial survey business, an extension of the survey work that Cindy had done for decades.
“We thought, ‘How can we make all these skills work together?’” she recalls.
The group targeted Prineville Reservoir with the goal of capturing an aerial shot of the body of water and demonstrating what the aerial survey work could offer. She had already utilized drones for several years but found that their use had limits – it would take hundreds of drone flights over such a large area to properly capture it. But mapping the reservoir would only take three hours by fixed-wing aircraft, and as a result, all the data would come from the same timeline and same camera.
“It’s just easier to mesh together with the software,” Cindy said. “It’s just a really cool process.”
Now armed with a quality aerial photo of the entire reservoir, the group is thinking next steps. The plan is to share the photo as evidence of what they can offer, and Cindy offers a number uses for the aerial survey work.
“You can extract contour data – I could tell you how much water has receded from the reservoir. I could look at old Google Earth maps and water lines along the perimeter and do those volume calculations.”
Using a thermal camera, they could fly over solar fields and pinpoint which panels are not performing correctly, a process that is normally done at ground level, visiting and examining each one. They could use the aerial surveying to help farmers and ranchers perfect property boundaries or locate drainage problems on irrigation systems.
The group is excited about the many possibilities, and even better, it’s fun.
“We are all just looking for something fun to do in retirement and maybe help some people along the way and make a little bit of money.”
