GIIEPS - CAP goes high tech

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

Currently SDWNG is flying DR missions for the state for our current flooding here, and today's sortie we flew with the GIIEPS equipment.

My reactions:
Our mission scanner had just previously attended the training session this past weekend for use of the equipment, so he was fresh and excited to use it, as I was excited to see it in action, however we were severely disappointed with it's capabilities.
First, the data connection was extremely spotty.  The GIIEPS uses a sprint air card to secure it's data connection, which may work just fine in more populated areas, but Sprint coverage here in South Dakota is limited to a very small area, and not really present at all in the rural areas where we were taking photo's. 
When taking video (when we had connection to stream) we noticed that unless you have a monopod or something to stabalize the camera, the camera shakes and vibrates too much as a result of just being in the aircraft for any useful video to be taken at altitude.  While an overall picture (read:un-zoomed) can turn out fine, once you are zoomed in on an objective or target, the camera shake becomes a hinderance.  So for future reference for any other aircrews who may use the system, it would be wise to bring along something to counteract that.
Second is really the most useful function we found was the chat function, as we could log in and sms with mission base.  Albeit a pretty useless function in the presence of working radios, but there you go.

The still picture camera we got along with it was essentially useless for Aerial photography, the resolution was 8mp, but only with a limited digital zoom.  It did have it's own data logger however the reading on the photos left out the minutes and seconds of the lat/long.  Now whether or not it imbedded the rest of the information as a header file, or it could be changed in the settings was something we didn't play with.  The camera is also waterproof at least...

Overall we were pretty disappointed with it's usefulness for our purposes, however I could see how the system would come into it's own on certain CD or Homeland Security missions (in areas of adequate coverage) where you have specific personnel available to make use of the live video.  The lack of coverage though, was the biggest issue we encountered, as when you don't have a connection, the whole system becomes nothing more than ballast.

My experience echo's Travis', except make sure you take your Ginger Tablets before hand.  I've been flying for "awhile" and have never been sick, but balancing a shaking video camera, while staring at the screen,  was an nausea inducing experience

BTW, this was not with the GIIEP, but with a similar video camera, a capture card, and Ustream http://www.ustream.tv/

[peter rabbit]

+1 on the above comments about usefulness, nausea, etc