Now THIS is the airplane we SHOULD be flying...

[Nomex Maximus]

Do you know of a sensor that can be added to a 172 and do a capture as you describe for $10K?  I certainly don't. 

It still doesn't negate the need for analysts (ie. scanners) on the ground nor does it necessarily increase their efficiency or effectiveness.  Time is a factor...although if you threw enough bodies at screens perhaps you have a multiplying effect. 

If you have this magic solution, then great!  I'm all for it.  However, such a solution is does not exist that I'm aware of....although I'm willing to be proven wrong.

I was in the process of designing it just before I was laid off.

The electronics were either in pods that attached to the wing struts or inside new wingtips. A high bandwidth datalink beamed the image data down to mission base almost as fast as the images were taken. Self contained GPS receivers and inertial measurement systems stabilized the images and allowed the images to be tagged with precise lat/lon data - in other words, once the image gets beamed down to mission base and displayed on a PC, clicking on a pixel of the image would provide you with the exact lat/lon of that spot on the ground. The mission observer would use a tablet PC with a wireless connection to the pod/wingtip to control operation. If you had more than one aircraft in the air, one aircraft could act as a highbird data relay - allowing 100 - 200 mile range. Mission base could control the system directly and could even text commands to the aircrew or establish a full duplex voice channel on top of the image transfers. Sadly, the company probably won't build this now that I don't work there and I am unlikely ever to have the time to go through all the FAA certification work required for STCs on my own...

...but the point remains that we could be much more useful IF we began to make the transition to more advanced technology - sensors for search and rescue, not just eyeballs. And, if sensors then we need a platform that is designed for carrying advanced low cost sensors. Which is why I think that SA-38B looks so freaking cool...

OK, I know the SA-38B is not the ideal airplane for what we need, but it's still a cool looking airplane. Which was my original point.

[NIN]

Interesting what people send you...

[sardak]

Do you know of a sensor that can be added to a 172 and do a capture as you describe for $10K?  I certainly don't.

I was in the process of designing it just before I was laid off.
The electronics were either in pods that attached to the wing struts...

It just so happens, in a CAPTalk discussion from 18 months ago...

The JD3 Aerial Imaging System (AIS) represents the state of the art in airborne digital imaging equipment. It is designed to attach to the steel tubular spring type fixed landing gear of various single engine Cessna aircraft within 30 minutes (after initial installation) making it easy to deploy almost anywhere in the world. After initial installation of the JD3 AIS, The Camera Housing Assembly, Computer Mount Assembly, CDI Assembly and Power Supply Assembly can be removed and re-installed by the pilot in 15 minutes with only a Logbook entry.

FAA STC approval for most Cessna Type 152, 172 and 182

>Spatial Resolution 0.15m (6") to 1m
>Accuracy 1m/2m RMSE (.5m/1m product)
>Four Band Camera System (Visible [R,G, B] and Color IR)
>Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and Global Positioning System (GPS)
>Adds 29 pounds to the weight of the aircraft

The links on the old CAPTalk thread are dead, but here's the company that helped develop the system and owns 40 of the systems, and their site shows a map of where they're located.
http://www.simwright.com/aerialimagery1.htm

If they'd sell one, I suspect it would be more than $10k, though.

Mike

[Nomex Maximus]

Yeah, I went through the materials cost and it was way below $10,000... the GPS/INS/Magnetometer is now one little chip from Analog Devices at about $600 in single quantities. A single board computer running Linux is only a few hundred,  an imager not much more... and the datalink is COTS for about $2000. Like I wrote, the major effort is regulatory, both FAA and FCC. The big difference with my idea and the rest is that my system was designed to transmit images from the airplane to the base, not just store them until the airplane landed. In other words, when the airplane has searched a grid, we now have a complete digital image record of what the airplane flew over that can then be reviewed as needed.

It's not hard for me to imagine a larger aircraft specifically designed for carrying several (say five) imaging cameras with sufficient resolution each to cover everything under and to the sides of the airplane for two miles at a swath. The aircrew's purpose is then to fly the sensors and if they or someone on the ground sees something they can then maneuver in closer to confirm visually and get a close up image.

[NIN]

It's not hard for me to imagine a larger aircraft specifically designed for carrying several (say five) imaging cameras with sufficient resolution each to cover everything under and to the sides of the airplane for two miles at a swath. The aircrew's purpose is then to fly the sensors and if they or someone on the ground sees something they can then maneuver in closer to confirm visually and get a close up image.

Larger aircraft?  Here's a hint: One of our forum participants actually flew aerial survey last year for a subcontractor to the company that provides the imagery  that winds up in the Live.com "birds eye view" mapping product (try it: http://maps.live.com. The low-altitude "birds eye view" images are all part of the image sets that his company helped provide)

He spent the better part of about 8 months flying around a very plain-jane C-172 equipped with 5 very high resolution cameras on a very tightly prescribed flight pattern that was dictated by a computer system.  I don't recall the exact #s, but seem to recall it was +/- 100ft and left/right no more than 200-ish feet off the ground track.

The plane had a computer rack on the back containing a georeference platform (high-resolution GPS + INS), a computer system to georeference and store the images, an interface to a HUD-type device to plot deviations to the flight path, removeable hard drives to send the day's "take" back to the home office, and not much room for much more.  The cameras were mounted in the baggage area, one looking out the baggage door to the left, the other thru a hole in the fuselage to the right, and three in the belly (straight down, oblique forward and oblique aft).

I think that high-rez imagery is not only doable for CAP, but I think its going to become essential going forward.  A guy snapping photos with a Nikon and a tablet PC in the back seat is an OK "on-demand" item, but its not suitable for a stable, repeatable "on demand" sort of thing.

EDIT: I meant to say, too, that while our "hyperspectral imaging" is all neato, what about the visible spectrum?  Lenses and optics beat the Mk 1, Mod 0 eyeball hands down.

[Mustang]

I'm the chap who did the aerial survey flying, and here are a few pics of the system. The rear seat is removed to accommodate the computer rack visible in the 2nd pic. In addition to the camera ports cut in the baggage door, opposite side of the fuselage, and floor, it also requires significant modification to the exhaust system in order to port the exhaust gases aft of the camera bay (aka the baggage area).  There are around 50 aircraft so-equipped operating all over the country. If you spot a C-172 with a huge 12-foot exhaust pipe and holes in the baggage door and opposite side, you've found one.

It'd be perfect for CAP use, but unfortunately, it's a completely proprietary system, not something that could be bought off-the-shelf. The cameras are custom-made, the software that runs the show is developed in-house, etc.  This system is operated single pilot, though I'd expect that CAP would operate it with a second crewmember to operate the camera system and help watch for traffic. (As it is, the pilot's attention is pretty much glued to the glareshield display throughout each photo run. )

[Nomex Maximus]

The idea of using a 172 to take pictures is not new. And the idea of using a computer to direct the pilot and GPS/INS to reference the pictures is one that lots of people are having.

What CAP needs however is the ability to downlink those pictures as they are being taken. We don't want a system where the pilot has to fly back to base to offload a disk drive after four hours of flying - we want something that allows us to have more than a single pair of eyes look at a scene for more than a few seconds. We need to be able to say that if we have imaged a grid, then we know with high assurance that if there was something to see, we would have seen it. And if there was something to see, then we would be able to do something about it within minutes of seeing it.

The other big selling point needs to be that the system does not require any mods to the airplane. No holes to cut, no wires to run, no crew members to leave on the ground because the equipment is too big or heavy. As far I as could see, no one really has tried to make something like that happen. Yet.

BTW, we had a lady in our squadron who also flew these types of missions.

[Mustang]

Unfortunately, "real time" and "high resolution" are currently mutually exclusive concepts as it pertains to aerial imagery.

[Nomex Maximus]

Unfortunately, "real time" and "high resolution" are currently mutually exclusive concepts as it pertains to aerial imagery.

Not when an engineering stud like me is on the job! Oooops, I got laid off, sorry.

No, seriously I had a plan for how to do this. It could be done; it just needs someone with the time to do it.

[MikeD]

Unfortunately, "real time" and "high resolution" are currently mutually exclusive concepts as it pertains to aerial imagery.

For CAP at least.  At work a couple coworkers of mine had 10 MBps networking up/down running at close to 200 miles out, on L and S band TM frequencies.  Granted, on the ground we used what is known in highly technical terms as a "big freaking dish!"... (see Figure 1).

Note the expected range circle on page 17.   http://dtrs.dfrc.nasa.gov/archive/00001870/01/214633.pdf

[NIN]

For CAP at least.  At work a couple coworkers of mine had 10 MBps networking up/down running at close to 200 miles out, on L and S band TM frequencies.  Granted, on the ground we used what is known in highly technical terms as a "big freaking dish!"... (see Figure 1).

Note the expected range circle on page 17.   http://dtrs.dfrc.nasa.gov/archive/00001870/01/214633.pdf

Oh man, talk geek to me! 

(even though about 70% of that went straight over my head, it was interesting reading)

Seriously, though, compared to the money spent on Archer over the last 5-6 years, a COTS alternative to using satellite telephone technology to email pictures would be a drop in the proverbial bucket.  I'm not sure of the legalities of using it in an airplane, but as broader "mesh" WWAN technologies like WiMax come online throughout the country, my bet is that we see the ability to do this kind of "node on the network" thing go up and the cost go down, and also broaden the coverage area while not demanding the crew fly at a Flight Level on O2. 

Heck, it was 10+ years ago that a couple of us were investigating using a Doppler DF unit, GPS, an electronic compass unit, packet radio & a laptop with some custom mapping software in 2+ vehicles for "semi-automated ELT homing" (mind you, at the time I was living in Michigan: Flat as a board pretty much everywhere.  Signal propagation, DF sensitivity, terrain blocking, etc, were all different factors.  However, now I live out in New England where they have these funny things called "hills" ... not exactly conducive to the same style of DFing...)

I could even foresee a plane being put up, much like the airborne repeater "High Birds" we have now, to serve as a relay platform for high-speed networking.  A "High Router Bird" for lack of a better term, to help get far flung packets back to the HQ site.

[Nomex Maximus]

NIN - check your PMs.

[blackrain]

Anyone know if their are any OV-1 Mohawks out in the desert at AMARC we could get our hands on? GREAT downward visibility. I'm glad you guys are really discussing a need for better sensing capability to keep/make CAP more useful and relevant.

While it's not what I would call hi resolution the sensor suite off a Shadow UAV might bear looking at. I believe it is under 40lbs (the WHOLE system may weigh more) and the ball is under 1 foot in diameter. It's called the POP 200/300 and it's manufactured by Israeli Aircraft Industries. As a UAV system it's already set up to be controlled by and downlinked to the ground.

All it takes is money

[PHall]

Anyone know if their are any OV-1 Mohawks out in the desert at AMARC we could get our hands on? GREAT downward visibility.

Turbine engines and CAP do not go together. Period.

[Mustang]

Turbine engines and CAP do not go together. Period.

Meh. Maybe not for the average rank-and-file CAP pilot, but we've got plenty of guys in the ranks who fly turbine equipment for a living.

[Mustang]

While it's not what I would call hi resolution the sensor suite off a Shadow UAV might bear looking at. I believe it is under 40lbs (the WHOLE system may weigh more) and the ball is under 1 foot in diameter. It's called the POP 200/300 and it's manufactured by Israeli Aircraft Industries. As a UAV system it's already set up to be controlled by and downlinked to the ground.

I believe that (or something similar) is what they're using on NVWG's aircraft for the simulated Predator stuff.

[NIN]

Anyone know if their are any OV-1 Mohawks out in the desert at AMARC we could get our hands on? GREAT downward visibility.

Turbine engines and CAP do not go together. Period.

And the "Widowmaker"? Yeah, not a good combo.  I have a couple hrs in an OV-1 as an "incentive" ride about 20+ years ago, but for CAP purposes, no.

[Hoorah]

Hell yah we need this its so cool.

[Flying Pig]

Turbine engines and CAP do not go together. Period.

Meh. Maybe not for the average rank-and-file CAP pilot, but we've got plenty of guys in the ranks who fly turbine equipment for a living.

Your right.  I know a few here in CA, but on the grand scheme of things, you guys are still a very small....small number I would imagine.  So keeping that in mind, Gentlemen, I am offering my services and I will step up to the plate.  I WILL allow one of you or your company to send me to Flight Safety to get checked out in any aircraft you choose for me.   :clap:

Not all at once, my email server is bogging down.....

[Gunner C]

Turbine engines and CAP do not go together. Period.

Meh. Maybe not for the average rank-and-file CAP pilot, but we've got plenty of guys in the ranks who fly turbine equipment for a living.

Your right.  I know a few here in CA, but on the grand scheme of things, you guys are still a very small....small number I would imagine.  So keeping that in mind, Gentlemen, I am offering my services and I will step up to the plate.  I WILL allow one of you or your company to send me to Flight Safety to get checked out in any aircraft you choose for me.   :clap:

Not all at once, my email server is bogging down.....