BACK IN THE RACE! for those considering UAV airframes for their aerial photography and photomapping applications we now have available the AeroMapper UAV. A high performance electric glider integrated with a UAV Payload Bay Module that offers great room and protection for electronics. We are trying to contribute to the community with a high end and airframe but solving the problem of not having enough room for electronics by adding our UAV Payload Bay Module. More info at www.aeromao.com.
About us: since 2003 we have been doing aerial photography and photomapping in Colombia and other Latin American countries for government institutions, private organizations , and other mining and oil companies. From our beginnings and to the year 2008 we travelled a lot, flying here and there and we had a lot of fun. During this time we achieved more than 280 flight missions and probably some history firsts without knowing: we produced the first UAV-made orthophoto that is officially on Google Earth approved and added to this software by Google Inc. (We have a document from Google Inc. that certifies it is the first in Google Earth made by an UAV).
Also we made several flight missions for road planning projects, in which we flew the Genesis (our first UAV, a 21 Kg beast) over the course of many kilometres. The longest single flight was an spectacular UAV flight operation along a very curvy road, going down the mountains to a big valley. We took off the plane from the road at 1500 magl and ended landing at 200 magl, 80 Km away, after 2 hrs of flight time. Due to the topography and curves of the road, and the altitude at which the flight was to be performed we had to fly manually the airplane during the whole mission, trying to keep it on top of our heads while controlling from a moving vehicle in the road..... We will be posting what we call "history UAV videos" on youtube soon about this adventures...
Now being in Canada, we'll continue pursuing our dreams, now that we are settled down in this amazing and beautiful country. That`s why we are BACK IN THE RACE!
Questions and comments are very welcome!
have fun!
Comments
Thanks for your comment Krzysztof!
A neat cover for the camera hole will available soon, solving this situation and keeping simplicity and cost low.
Envy our weather? I think we have just a few milimeters less of yearly snow than Poland!
Cheers and congratulations for your work
Greeting from Poland.
This is a nice concept. We gave up such layout because underwing pod for camera lands exactly on camera hole, eating dirt. This in turn prefers parachute-only operation or some complicated cover, while we wanted to conserve the option for classic landing as well, we have muddy soil quite often.
I envy you the weather, whatever you do you don't have to fly in the snow ;-)
Your experience clearly shows that inventions are made independently, worldwide and no country is a marked as a winner since the beginning - it's the people.