"Hey Matthew, thanks for the idea.  We spent a little time looking into this.  We liked the idea that it would always come back to you on a tether (or at least you could always find it), but we had a couple hangups.  If we planned to climb to 300' -…"

"Sure is, check out: BackcountryDrones.com"

"We sure hope so, check out BackcountryDrones.com, we have some information there that you might find interesting.  We also have a Facebook page if that is more your speed...."

"Thanks John, on a similar note, this drone should be more than capable of sending text messages (though not currently incorporated).  The thinking was if you get into a sticky situation in a canyon or valley it could be deployed to broadcast your…"

"An excellent idea Matthew!"

"Hi Daniel,
Yes, we would like to eventually see it brought to market.  One of the reasons for sharing it on this site is to gauge people's reactions and see if there was any interest.  At the very least I'll be building several for myself and…"

"I published this post a few times with minor changes not understanding it would delete comments.  Think a few were lost, my apologies."

"Hey Brian, yes it is all basically custom.  We're currently using a collection of development/breakout boards offered by places like Sparkfun.com or Adafruit.com.  We hand-etched some boards to help us cut down on the number of wires. The coding is…"

"The original concept was just something to pop-up and snap some photos before falling back to the user, so flight time wasn't really a concern.  After we opted to include a GPS to limit its wondering during the ascent, having it fly simple circuits…"

"There is a swashplate with linkages to the aft rotor.  It's the same design for the latest, blue prototype as you can see in the earlier, yellow one. 
So the aft rotor has cyclic control while the fwd rotor does not (no collective for either). It…"