Fixed-Wing Magnetic and Gamma-Ray Spectrometric Surveys

NOVATEM only uses proprietary aircrafts. The magnetic signature of NOVATEM’s aircrafts has been considerably improved using especially designed titanium or stainless steel parts. The preference is given to fixed-wings with a lower magnetic signature flying at a lower speed, for a higher radiometric and magnetic resolution. If necessary, several aircrafts are used at the same time to carry out the survey in the best delays possible.

NOVATEM uses proprietary navigation, acquisition and compensation software resulting from more than 25 years of practical experience of research and development in airborne geophysical surveying.

NOVATEM uses state-of-the-art technology in positioning: a high performance laser whose precision is better than one centimetre for accurate altitude measurements and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for both the correction of the positioning measurements and the magnetic compensation. A very small change in the orientation of the fluxgate axis generates a very strong variation of the magnetic measurement. For a magnetic field of 53000nT, a difference in orientation of 0.1° results in a variation of amplitude of more than 100 nT. A positioning error of one axis, even small, thus results in a significant error, which causes anisotropy of the magnetic measurement. It is thus impossible to make accurate compensation measurements with the only use of a vector magnetometer (fluxgate). Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) provides very accurate attitude angles only able to reach the very high resolution of magnetic measurements.