Just found this in the news:
The Sea Shepherd ship, Steve Irwin, deployed a drone to successfully locate and photograph the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru on December 24th.
Would be interesting to get more information about the system they use... (Range endurance etc.)
Especially the recovery on the small helicopter deck could be challenging.
Merry Christmas to all !!
Marc
Comments
They got an official reprimand from the Australian government:
THE conservation group Sea Shepherd has received what it describes as a reprimand from the Australian government for its use of aerial drones to track the Japanese whaling fleet.
The Australian Antarctic Division told it the drones must undergo an urgent environmental impact assessment (EIA) if they are to be used in waters covered by the Antarctic Treaty.
http://marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?centerx=30¢ery=25... they are not showing up on AIS
The drone is a Hanger 18 Osprey, check this link: http://hangar18uav.com/osprey.htm
I was concerned with getting fingers in the prop throwing this beast but I goes that's not an issue if you have good headwind. Would love to see videos of the procedures Jimmy. What are the specs as to speed and endurance?
The Osprey is hand launched and recovered in a net on the ship during landing. In the picture the left aileron is up because the autopilot has been initialized and is trying to bring the plane back to level. As soon as it's launched it will level off and start a climb to a given altitude before it starts navigating. We can also bungee the Osprey but if it's powered properly (as this one is) you can hand launch with a little wind in your face.
Jimmy
Hangar 18
(Designer of the Osprey :) )
I did not want to bring "politics" into this but since GM has linked to a rather unbalanced propaganda site for PW/SS I am compelled to provide balance to the story.
This is a very delicate matter and I hope I will not be thrown out of here for bringing in an alternative view on the matter. You can trust that I love whales and other animals as much as anyone and I do not approve of the Japanese whaling program or other irresponsible hunting in any way. I am brought up with farming and nature, I am a fisher, hunter and nature conservationist myself and would never unnecessarily hurt an animal.
But Paul Watson is not the one to further the cause for anything. He is a persona non grata in a large part of the world for a good reason. Not because of noble activism for protecting animals or nature but for his reckless, violent and irresponsible actions. Only luck has saved him from becoming responsible for manslaughter.
Before you decide where you want to place your money for nature, do your own research. You can start by removing the glee from your eyes and reading Greenpeace's declaration (they threw him out). This declaration is trying hard to be nice and diplomatic about the guy and his doings:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/paul-watson/
Calling him an activist is belittling the term. He certainly collects his share of affluent followers as have other desperado's in history but that does not annihilate his nefarious record. The firm that gave him the drones is deriving good publicity but they should be careful because PW is "this close" to being classified as a terrorist in the US and Australia and I guess that is not good for the UAV business?
Enough said. Let's stick to the fun part and find out what, how much and how well these guys have done to propagate our common interest.
I hereby promise not to utter one more word here that can be interpreted as being off the DIYdrones topic in any way. If you want to haggle with me on the subject of SS and PW then by all means do so in PM's.
I myself am very interested in the matter because where I live we are constantly in need of better search and rescue techniques. Open sea search is a field where I see autonomous drones as a very promising and useful technique. The monotonous sea surface is an almost prefect venue for automated search by "artificial intelligence" image detection. Our group is planning research on this and I hope I can relate our experience here later.
My vision is that of a drone, perhaps jet driven that autonomously sweeps a large area at great speed and delivers coordinates and multi-modal images in real time of anything that differs from the very uniform appearance of the sea surface. This would spare enormous time and cost that now is spent on search by planes and large helicopters. Therefore it is important to derive knowledge and experience, if any is to be learned, from this story.
You might just find out more about this
http://animal.discovery.com/tv/whale-wars/sea-shepherd/
Soon
If you have a landing area big enough for a helo then you can defiantly land while underway as shown in Gary's clip. During the winter, here in Northern Cal, the wind really picks up and I land my platforms (stryker, sky fly max, and raven (nitro-003) right at my feet because the wind is doing all the work. It really looks cool but takes a little practice. The raven is the most difficult to land this way, it's stall speed is faster than the other two so it's decent is a little faster, plus mine has been reinforced w/another layer of fiberglass so seeing it come in right at you still is a little disconcerting but that's a mental thing, not a platform thing. Seems I can't get over not wanting to be skulled by my own plane!
I don´t think landing an a small vessel will be easy. In some conditions, yes... But the platform seems quite heavy. (See this as an example: http://youtu.be/Ox1ThuHDxoM) We probably have to wait till next years "whale wars" series start...
Gary, thanks for your insides. Do I get you right that it is a complete system made by Atto? The one on the pictures looks like improvement on the one described as 2h endurance (Jackaroo). But still electric. The 15h doesn´t sound like LiPo :-)
Cheers, Marc
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