Flying long, straight transects perpendicular to the swath of catastrophic damage from a major hurricane, say 100 miles. The pilot is asked to follow a certain azimuth and altitude as closely as safely possible.

B

I think your talking about this failure and you right, the pilots got very disorientated while trying to land the things

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XFY



Ugly little thing isn't it? Although I question how it would have faired in combat with a Mig

__________________
1982 300GD Carmine Red (DB3535) Cabriolet Parting Out
1990 300SEL Smoke Silver (Parting out)
1991 350SDL Blackberry Metallic (481)

"The thing is Bob, its not that I'm lazy...its that I just don't care."

I know, I was being conservative...

__________________
-Evan


Benz Fleet:
1968 UNIMOG 404.114
1998 E300
2008 E63


Non-Benz Fleet:
1992 Aerostar
1993 MR2
2000 F250

OMG! That's it! Funny how memory is: I thought all 4 wings were symmetrical. Hell, it's only been 50 years.

I'd hope so.

Bot - Can you mount the camera on a gyro platform? If so - All your issues are solved.

__________________
1980 300D - Veggie Burner !

Here you go Bot...

http://www.flir.com/cvs/americas/en/content/product.cfm?id=7144

__________________
-Evan


Benz Fleet:
1968 UNIMOG 404.114
1998 E300
2008 E63


Non-Benz Fleet:
1992 Aerostar
1993 MR2
2000 F250

The data acquisition is a done-deal. I'm trying to help salvage what we can.

The problems with full-fledged aerial platforms is expense and timeliness. For those big projects or projects where data are not ephemeral we have a bid system in which we provide the parameters and companies bid on the contract. However, under dire circumstances, experience shows that within the public domain realm and the resolution we need, traditional systems cannot meet the time constraints.

I can describe examples of ephemeral data. Just think of a class of observational data that comes-and goes in a matter of hours but whose effects might persist for months or years. If you don't capture the information RIGHT NOW, all you have are derivative evidence. This is an area of active research, so I don't know exactly how we're going to go about it. There's a real possibility that it will be UAV (which has a huge air safety problem that is still a bone of serious bureaucratic contention).

So my colleague stuck his neck out and funded an unauthorized expenditure to hire a local chopper pilot to fly him over an uninhabited area (outside of controlled airspace) and he took an hour or so of HD video. He's a hell of a good ecologist, but remote sensing ain't as easy as he thought so he's swallowed a giant warm pile of PhD pride and asked for help.

I though, "Piece of cake!" Which of course, it isn't.

When I look at his video I can see changes in fall azimuth along each transect, differences in size classes of the felled trees, and snap heights and limb loss and defoliation, etc. But I can also see that the frame-to-frame displacement is not trivial and since I have no gyro info, I think my only recourse is to assume the worst "normal" flight envelope and scale all of the derived values between optimal and worst case. My thoughts are that worst-case would be the reasonable pitch and roll of a helicopter attempting to fly straight and level under normal conditions.

Except (as somebody said above) for corners, the flight looked pretty mundane. The intercom chatter couldn't be more mundane (recorded on video). My ecologist said it was a smooth flight. So I'm thinking a normal envelope, whatever that is.

B

For that technology, your tax dollars are better spent killing *********s in the Hindu Kush.

I don't know if this information is going to help, but a Cobra from the Veit-Nam era can fly upside down for way longer that you might think.

This is only useful when ferrying loud mouthed majors from one place to another and they are starting to get on your nerves. They are very quite after that.

At least, that is what I have been told.

Pooka