dieFluggeister

Early Saturday morning Oct. 28 one of our Soldiers named Troy Schultz went missing near the town of Pelican Rapids MN, while on leave. His car was later discovered in a slough but Troy was nowhere to be found. Area searches have been conducted daily since his disappearance including divers in the muddy waters where his vehicle was found. Prayers to his family and friends and for the searchers this week in locating Troy.

What caught my eye this morning was a report of a "drone" aircraft used to take pictures of the 160 acre surrounding area. They failed to mention the operator but I did catch a glimpse of the craft. It didn't appear to be drone in the military sense but rather an off the shelf RC glider (electric?) presumably outfitted with a still camera. I'm still looking around and asking questions to the news agency who ran the story to find out a little more. I was surprised that the news media called it a 'high tech unmanned aerial vehicle', but maybe there was more to craft than met the eye.

What I really liked however is the thought that one of our local guys took the time and used his skill and equipment to do what he can in the search for Troy. I guess its not surprising though given all the genuine and caring people I have met in the course of this hobby. I'm proud too that our hobby could contribute if even in a small way.

Jim Thomerson

I saw an article in the local paper about a company started by a couple of RC modelers who make and fly camera airplanes. Their airplanes are flying wings and can carry either a regular digital camera or video. They are licensed and etc., a commercial venture. The story mentioned that, on two different occasions, they had rather quickly found bodies which had not been found with extensive ground search. So I suspect a similar company has been engaged by local law enforcement.

Raymond LeFlyr

My Feedback: (2)

Wow! What a good idea! And congratulations to whoever is doing it.

I can't help thinking about how this could be useful in my own area and what type of model and data capture would I use;

I'd expect that in order to be effective you'd really have to have a real-time video link tied in to some way to capture GPS coordinates. But then if you're only limited to our normal range (distance and height) for, say, a powered glider then it would be useful for swampy-like terrain - tough to navigate on the ground but clear visibility from the air. To be really useful, wouldn't you need to be able to fly beyond our normal line-of-sight range and stay low enough to get good resolution?

. . . I'm sorry, I seem to have turned my intended "way to go" message into a mental exercise. I do agree with dF, I'd like to know what kind of equipment was used - and I hope they didn't need it because he showed up OK.

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

Curious how he avoids being shot down if a club would be in the area? Maybe HAM freq?

KidEpoxy

I'm not sure if the best approach is low alt for decent digi pics, or getting a really good film camera at a higher alt for better enlargements... I would hate to lose details to the Jpeg Compression Monster making even an 8mp digi fuzz under enlargement... but you cant beat the digital for real time (or even just after landing) data

soarrich

My Feedback: (98)

I saw a show that had an Army drone, it looked like a 3 meter moldy sailplane, with a pylon mounted wing. It came in two cases, they assembled it in about 5 minutes, flew it with and RC type box, but it had an auto pilot that could be programed for autonomous flight. It used a electric pusher motor at the back of the pylon, and relayed real time TV to the ground. The put it into a deep stall to land it. It was pretty cool!

skaliwag

My Feedback: (1)

Did it look like anything at this site?

http://spyplanes.com/index.html

treedog

This place will give some ideas as to how to start on a video freq that might do the job there are others
http://antennasystems.com/broadband....FQlPVAodxjsY5w
Td

soarrich

My Feedback: (98)

No the one I saw looked like this, slightly bigger fuse, T tail and a motor at the back of the wing pylon.

dieFluggeister

This is not the setup I saw in the local search but just a vid from the net I saw a couple weeks back. A set of video goggles with gyro coupled with a realtime vid cam on a robotic 2D swivel. Check out the plane it's mounted in. Looks like 3 grand worth of equipment mounted in a $100 plane.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...rtual+rc&hl=en

dieFluggeister

Just got an answer from the news media - Surprising what they didnt say on the news. The operator is a commercial outfit based in Canada.

http://www.cropcam.com/

Raymond LeFlyr

My Feedback: (2)

Verrry interesting, CropCam is. I don't have a clue as to how that would help farmers, but the North orientation and GPS fix per shot and different altitude options would certainly be exact/accurate. How clever.

BuzzBomber

My Feedback: (4)

Over on "that other" RC site, in the aerial photography forum, is a frequent poster who runs a similar outfit doing SAR work for the local authorities. If I'm not mistaken, he is in the Southwest US and uses a flying wing, similar to a Zagi, with some sort of a Pentax digital coupled to a GPS unit, and reviews the high resolution stills upon landing to look for any clues before launching again to cover more territory. I was amazed at how this gentleman was able to create such an effective setup largely with off the shelf components.

hogflyer

Over in that other forum, there is a guy who flies using a camera mounted on a servo in the cockpit. He wears a headset with dual screens to see what the plane is doing, and controls the camera motion via a gyro mounted on the headset. He flies from a lawn chair and the goes where ever he wants to. Some great video from it. I can get the link if anybody is interested.

What I really liked about his setup is you have the natural movement of you head swiveling around in the plane like it's full scale, and get the same view from the cockpit as you would with full scale. Something like that, possible using a second camera set up the same way, may be good for SAR.

Hogflyer

Andrew

The video is a "must see". It's some of the coolest VR/electronics/video/model work I've seen in a long time.

hogflyer

Here's the link to the other site's thread. I know, I'm probably not supposed to post it here, but the for everybody to see what VRflyer is doing is worth it. The video's start at the top of the thread, and there is a lot of good information throughout.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=571299

Hogflyer

Tim Wiltse-RCU

Hey Dorks DF posted a link to that video a few messages up a couple of HOURS ago!

LAter,
Tim

small_rcer

Well I know it is not 1/2a but one of my planes took these aerials and for the price they are pretty fair.

http://www.lobstercove.ca/cgi-bin/ya...num=1160323567

On the same R/C site there are other pics in a subject called early fall flying.

So aerials for search are very practical.

And very cheap.

Jim ( I am really cheap ) H

hogflyer

There's more than one video.......