If you are flying over water, why not fly FROM water? Get a trainer with floats. Brushless motor with LiPo. Nothing wrong with LiPo packs so long as you charge them properly and make sure to get ones that are up to the job. You can do the job with standard nicad packs also but, if you are going to go electric, go brushless.
With the dollar amount you have available, you can get some very high quality video.
Check out BlackwidowAV.com. Great equipment, great prices. Great results.
ORIGINAL: SLICKnTWISTED
The magazine that I work for will be launching a TV show early 2005. We have a desire to included some AP shots in our offering. Some of the locales we'll be shooting will not have runways and in some cases we'll be filming over water and will have to land into a net of some sort. I'm thinking electric although not LiPol due to safety isses. The airframe needs to be durable and fairly stable in the air. There will most likely be some wind involved. I'm leaning towards a CombatWings type system,
www.combatwings.com. XE2. I'll have about $1000 to work with for this project. Just thought before I pulled the trigger I would see what you guys thought. Feel free to make any and all recommendations. Thanks.
p.s... I do realize that the picture quality will not be TV grade which is ok, some edginess is good.