mini helicopters for pilotage duties

[sarabande]

thinking laterally, or maybe perhaps vertically, about the use of small helios with cameras....

The ability to raise your height of eye a hundred or so feet above deck might have advantages in close-to pilotage, perhaps checking wave patterns, berthing spaces, approaching traffic, round river bends, taking messages to the crew ashore, and so on.


Anyone care to post to vid of their 'copter being used as a spy in the sky ?



(I am always open to sponsorship, and to test drive one big enough to carry a GoPro HD camera )

 

[davidej]

Go to youtube -there are plenty.

 

[Jamesuk]

Drode's are amazing. They are programmable to do amazing things such as 'activated va mobile phone set to fly around me while windsurfing and doing tricks and while im busy it will automatically fly back to the beach when it is running low on battery power.

 

[Poignard]

It might be handy for taking a line ashore.

Cheaper and less smelly than a Newfoundland dog

 

[prv]

There was a bit of a buzz last year about the AR Drone, a helicopter with camera that you control from a mobile phone. I believe it has some degree of autonomous flying capability, so you just tell it which way to go rather than actively keeping it stable etc.

Someone told me that the maintenance people at work were planning to buy one to inspect the roofs without having to put up scaffolding or hire cherry-pickers. Don't know if they actually did.

The obvious problem when sailing is that anything small and light enough to be convenient on board is going to have difficulty with the wind.

Pete

 

[photodog]

We looked at acquiring a camera drone thing a couple of years ago... One built in Canada inparticular...


There are several problems with operations in the uk...

1) you need licensing from the civila aviation peeps.... One of the police forces got one and didn't realise this and we're grounded...

2) you can only operate them when the weather is within parameters for visibility and wind.... And in day light..... A surprisingly small number of hours per year as it turns out....

3) cost. They ain't cheap for thengood ones.... And then you do have ongoing costs for batteries and motors and blades.... Combined with the limited time available due to weather constraints and we worked out that hiring a real helicopter would be more costs effective for the work we had envisaged.

 

[jwilson]

thinking laterally, or maybe perhaps vertically, about the use of small helios with cameras....

The ability to raise your height of eye a hundred or so feet above deck might have advantages in close-to pilotage, perhaps checking wave patterns, berthing spaces, approaching traffic, round river bends, taking messages to the crew ashore, and so on.


Anyone care to post to vid of their 'copter being used as a spy in the sky ?



(I am always open to sponsorship, and to test drive one big enough to carry a GoPro HD camera )

Waiting for someone to run aground or hit something because they were looking at the view ahead from their helicopter cam....

Mind you, crossing some bars with an onshore wind it can be very difficult to see the bits where the seas are breaking least from sea level. A masthead cam might give you a much better view, as you do from a high wheelhouse on a big motor boat. But then there's so much movement up there that you'd need to gyro-stabilise the camera on it's remote pan-tilt mechanism. And it would have to be colour and with a lens with polarising filter for spotting coral heads in lagoons. Definitely the next must-have bit of kit, and once Raymarine have built it it will be a steal at £20,000.

 

[greenalien]

Lots of people are working on this - see http://diydrones.com/ and http://www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk/ for starters.

Some of the implications for these things are a bit worrying though, since anyone can now put together a completely autonomous aerial vehicle that can follow a precise, GPS-guided flight path...

 

[Hoolie]

Lots of people are working on this - see http://diydrones.com/ and http://www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk/ for starters.

Some of the implications for these things are a bit worrying though, since anyone can now put together a completely autonomous aerial vehicle that can follow a precise, GPS-guided flight path...

The outfit at the second link also provide professional drone and photo services.

Photodog - could they provide the kind of functionality you had in mind?

 

[Habebty]

There was a bit of a buzz last year about the AR Drone, a helicopter with camera that you control from a mobile phone. I believe it has some degree of autonomous flying capability, so you just tell it which way to go rather than actively keeping it stable etc.

Someone told me that the maintenance people at work were planning to buy one to inspect the roofs without having to put up scaffolding or hire cherry-pickers. Don't know if they actually did.

The obvious problem when sailing is that anything small and light enough to be convenient on board is going to have difficulty with the wind.

Pete

Yes we have one at work. The HV electrical engineers use it for close inspection of 25kv insulators and the like.

 

[Poignard]

We looked at acquiring a camera drone thing a couple of years ago... One built in Canada inparticular...


There are several problems with operations in the uk...

1) you need licensing from the civila aviation peeps.... One of the police forces got one and didn't realise this and we're grounded...

2) you can only operate them when the weather is within parameters for visibility and wind.... And in day light..... A surprisingly small number of hours per year as it turns out....

3) cost. They ain't cheap for thengood ones.... And then you do have ongoing costs for batteries and motors and blades.... Combined with the limited time available due to weather constraints and we worked out that hiring a real helicopter would be more costs effective for the work we had envisaged.

Another problem could be that overflying someone's land at low altitude might be held to be trespass, if it interferes with the ordinary use and enjoyment of their land.

 

[sarabande]

Another problem could be that overflying someone's land at low altitude might be held to be trespass, if it interferes with the ordinary use and enjoyment of their land.

that's a frightening thought. How do property owners stand if they see a small helicopter overflying their land ? Can they shoot it down ?

Is it perhaps like overgrowing trees: you can cut down what is on your side of the fence, but you must return the pieces to the owner.

 

[Poignard]

that's a frightening thought. How do property owners stand if they see a small helicopter overflying their land ? Can they shoot it down ?

Is it perhaps like overgrowing trees: you can cut down what is on your side of the fence, but you must return the pieces to the owner.

If I shot at every aircraft that flew over here I'd need a lot of bullets.

But there was a case where Lord Bernstein sued an aerial photgraphy company for flying over his land. He lost because it wasn't flying low enough, (whatever 'low enough' is), to interfere with 'the ordinary use and enjoyment of his land'.

But if someone persistently flew a toy helicopter with a camera in it at low altitude over people's houses I'll bet it wouldn't be long before they ended up in court.

Remember the outcry about Google's snooper vans?