Model Forum / Radio Controlled / Air Models / June 2007

Yes. Lots of them. They're referred to as trainers or training
planes and are more stable and easy to fly than aerobatic planes.
The Senior Telemaster has been used this way for a long time. Mostly
as sport but sometimes for serious long range observations.

The transmitter range is the limit, not the line of sight. People
have flown behind silos, buildings, trees and such without losing
control other than not seeing their plane. This isn't a good
practice and those who have done it have largely done it by
accident, not design.

This can be done but for use in flying the plane, there's simply too
much delay between what the plane sees to send back and the real
time position of the plane in space. Even a few milliseconds of
delay is critical in some circumstances - particularly takeoff and
landing.

They're models and as long as they stay light enough they can take
off on unrealistically short runways. Most fliers do a long takeoff
for the effect rather than for need. It looks nicer.

It is but I suggest a set of IP Cameras and a cell phone that is
Internet ready. You can run up to 16 cameras in a wired or wireless
(or both) mode and send all the images to software that comes with
the IP Video hub. Read up on it. You'll find that you can even add a
DVR to the system to record up to 30 days of 16 cameras on a 20Gbyte
hard drive. Most DVRs come with 360Gbyte or larger drives these
days. That would be nearly a year of 24/7 coverage without wasting
fuel or your time. Or, you can set up a dedicated PC to do the job.
Even an older, slow Pentium III will do the job.

Flying a plane that remains airborn for about 20 minutes then needs
refueling, recharging of batteries and the full focus of your
attention wastes a lot of your time. Security cameras with motion
sensor imaging will be your little slaves for years of faithful work
while you read a book, watch a movie or play with your kids. If you
use an IP Camera, your cell phone can be a very remote viewer when
you need it.

Your idea is just a bit impractical but I must say intriguing. It
sounds like heaps of fun.
--
Ray

Yep. Its called a flight simulator.

It takes skill to fly a plane.  It's going to take lots of science and money
to fly it out of sight and back.
That being said, whay you have described is a lighter than air air ship.
Bimp if you will. Many problems with this but I think this is as close as
your going to get to what you want.
I like Ray's idea.  There's more than one way to skin a cat
mk

As is my way, my post wasn't as clear as it could have been.

I'm not looking for 24x7 coverage. Should I hear a noise, see a parked/
slow moving car or have a suspicion, I want to be able to launch to
observe/confirm.

The problem with stationary cameras is I have to hope "the bad guys"
do what I don't want them to where the cameras are. Plus the cost of
all those cameras (not to mention the effort to get them hung) is
higher then I'd hope to spend.

I don't mind putting in time to learn to fly. But I don't believe this
will become a hobby, so by easy to fly I mean that any flight skills I
need to learn will be easy to retain (so 3 months from now I get the
"flying tool" out, I can still use it).

I know of the flight time limitations of electric. I hoped that gas
would provide longer flight times. Not true?

Very heavily wooded, so almost certainly out-of-sight flying abilities
is a must.

I'll Google the blimp idea (slow and quiet would be pluses)

Video would be optimal, but stills would work too.

Appreciate the responses, the debate and alternate suggestions.

As for aerial shots, you can do that much more simply.

Here's a bunch of pictures ...

  http://mclarenhome.com/~dougmc/RC/aerial-photography/

... that I took with an Aiptek 1.3MP SD camera taped with masking tape
to my plane.  I bought it at http://rcplanecams.com/ for $65, and it
was even modified it to give it a plug to connect to my RX so I can
take pictures by pushing a button on my TX.  (However, since it will
take about 400 pictures in it's 128 MB card (and I could go bigger) I
generally just it it in `take a picture every 2 seconds or so' mode
and concentrate on flying.

I did this from an 8' wing span electric glider (you can often see the
shadow), but the camera is small enough (under 2 oz) that you could
strap it to most planes with little trouble.  A Slow Stick is a
popular choice.

Note that these pictures are OK, but better cameras can take much
better ones.  Also note how hard it is to make out individual people
(let alone tell what they're doing!) and then let me tell you that any
camera that actually beams the picture back to a screen on the ground
in real time is not likely to have a picture anywhere near as good as
this unless you spend thousands of dollars on it (and have a much
bigger plane to mount it on.)  And if you were trying to watch what
people were doing, you'd need two people -- one to watch the video
feed and one to fly the plane.

In case you're curious, the 2007-06-09 pictures are at the ASF field
in Pflugerville, TX and the other two are at Zilker park in Austin,
TX.  The big pool you see in the Zilker park pictures is Barton
Springs.  Altitudes vary, but I doubt I went over 1500 feet for any of
these pictures.

Yes.  Practical?  Much less certain.