OK, that gives us quite a bit to work on, and allows me to make some suggestions. We have launched from moving boats, and were slated to fly for scientist in Patagonia spotting (and identifying) whales in the Roaring 40's region so that gives you an idea of what we were prepared for. We came up with a waterproof wing that would have the capability to take off from the boat and then land in the water for retrieval.Originally Posted by SteveWorkings
If that is the case, you don't even need an autopilot, which greatly reduces your cost. You can easily fly an aircraft like the Spectra from 1/2 mile away. I would recommend getting an IMU stabilization system to ease the pilot workload. If you could go a full auto system, the AP can be had for as little as $1800.
That really is no problem as people have been doing that for some time now. The only thing you might run into is a resolution issue. Most cheaper camera systems are fixed focal length and don't have zoom capabilities. You can get them, but like anything else, you pay more for it.
It's not a hobby with us either, we do it for a living! This is very easy to do as well. It would be just as easy to get a larger monitor and run a feed to it. If you need to record the video, then a laptop is a viable solution. There may be some Ipad solutions out there but I've never flown any of them (yet!).
Yep, familiar with that one too. The whale guys could look at the barnacles and varicocele on the whales head and call them by name!
This would likely come standard on a stabilization system. It would overlay on the video signal and be reported real time on the screen.
This looks like something you could get covered with a grant. We have a grantswriter available to us and could possibly assist in that area. When you consider that you can get a nearly complete unmanned airframe for one full scale flight hour, the economy begins to mount up when you fly several missions whenever and where ever you want. A few more rental hours and you could have a fully autonomous system. Sensors (cameras) are where you could spend lots of money. Better resolution, optics, capabilities etc. However, if a simple analog video camera will give you enough data then why spend the money?
As a side bar to the full scale aviation comment. They whale researchers were flying in Porter Pilatus aircraft and were very near to shore as well. They had to fly low to gather their I.D. info on the whales and unfortunately, that's when most mistakes turn deadly. They had lost three good whale biologist in the past 5 years to aircraft crashes in the water.
Gene
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