380th ESForces Squadron Launches Raven B

[Hawk200]

That thing is pretty cool though all kidding aside.  does it have a monitor to show you what your taking pictures of or do you hav to guesstimate?

Most of the military ones have a monitor on them, and you can take stills or actual video. Some of the more advanced ones have the ability to get sound, but that system is uncommon due to it's expense and complexity (you have to filter out the UAV sounds).

For those interested, there are a couple of Army MOS's for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle operator, and I think the Marines have one too. On the AF side, it's an officer job.

Here's a rundown on one of the Army UAV MOS's: http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=178

Don't recall the other one, read about it in the Army Times. Will dig if anyone actually wants to know that one too.

[floridacyclist]

That thing is pretty cool though all kidding aside.  does it have a monitor to show you what your taking pictures of or do you hav to guesstimate?

I know that the one I linked to (based on a regular RC airplane and using off-the-shelf parts) does....it uses a small video camera and ham frequencies (or commercial freqs for paying jobs) to beam a low-res picture back....it uses that to fly the plane and aim the Canon EOS mounted on a swivel in the belly of the plane. It can swing 90deg from straight forward to straight down.