Bathymetric LiDAR scanning - GIF

[hartleyts18]

Did thousands of hours flying in Queen Air aircraft using the forerunner of that laser equipment. Height profiled all of the Indonesia province of Papua, PNG, and the Northern half of Australia.
The equipment was called WREMAPS 1. The operations were called APR, Airborne Profiling Recording.

The use the APR for underwater profiling was being discussed in the 70s. I remember discussions on how to determine the position of the aircraft and therefore the profile. Over land the aircraft carried a 700mm strip camera and a Wild RC10 mapping camera. The film was used to determine the aircraft's position and where the laser hit the terrain.

GPS was not heard off then.
It was interesting to see video of the laser in action. We did not do survey work at night, only in VFR conditions with less than 2/8 cloud cover and within 700ft of the terrain.

https://www.dst.defence.gov.au/innovation/wremaps-laser-terrain-optical-equipment