Scouting Using RC Aircraft Aerial Photos

[Critterhunter]

Another hobby I enjoy is designing and building my own RC aircraft from scratch. I mostly come up with my own designs and build them by hotwiring EPS foam. It's much easier to work with than balsa and quick to repair in the event of a crash. Electric RC aircraft these days are overtaking the old gas planes in terms of performance and ease of use. This is thanks to the new brushless motors that have no brushes to wear out and produce outstanding speed and torque. A little $10 motor can easily put out 3 pounds of thrust or more, or reach speeds of well over 100mph depending on the motor wind and prop used. Lipo batteries have also cut the weight of battery packs in half and yet provide more power and double the run time. Thanks to places like Hobby City you can get into this fun hobby very cheap these days.

I sort'a combined the hobby of metal detecting with RC planes by using a plane to do remote live video transmitted to a ground display and also to take still high resolution digital photos of areas that are of interest to me. There is of course satelite images available on the web of some areas but it doesn't give me as many advantages as doing my own aerial photography.

With the plane I can take much closer pictures and angled shots of areas, which in some situations is the only way to see certain signs that human activity has taken place there in years gone by. Things such as slight humps of disturbed ground, old trails that's entrance can only be seen from the edge of the woods and not from above, and so on. The other advantage is being able to take shots at various times of the year, such as when the leaves have fallen to allow easier viewing of the forest floor, or in the spring when the apple trees are blooming and stand out among the other trees in the woods. Lone apple trees and other non-native plants that bloom are a good indicator of an old homesite. Another thing to watch for would be clusters of trees that are somehow different from the surrounding forest, like older ones that could have been shade trees in the yard, or younger ones growing where a house site has been abandoned.

I can launch this plane by hand and land it into tall grass if need be as it doesn't have landing gear or require a landing strip. I try to build my planes with numerous strength mods so that they can take hard landings and other punishment without damage. Normaly I just throw a switch on my transmitter every time I want to take a picture. but I can also have it record live video to a memory card onboard or transmit the signal to a TV on the ground for live viewing.

These pictures don't show how high I can get the plane to view further out, nor how low I can get it for even more ground detail. They are mostly medium altitude shots. An example of seeing hints of human acitivity would be the last photo where you can see faint outlines of trails through the grass. Not the obvious ones, look closer. Those are deer trails but it shows what I mean. From the ground something like this might not be visible to the human eye even if you were standing right on top of it.

 

[JOHNMARKHAM]

yes i do samething with r/c helis..its does allot of the leg work allot easier...good to see the pics..
hh
john

 

[Critterhunter]

Yea, not only do you cover more ground but you can see things that you could be standing right on top of and not notice without the bird's eye view. Another area this could be useful for is looking for buried foundations or ground that has been disturbed in some way in the past. I've noticed that if the dew or ground frost conditions are just right you can sometimes see the outline of a buried foundation by eye because of the temperture difference of the foundation and the surrounding ground. This is where the ground has been smoothed over with top soil so you'd otherwise have no other way to tell. I haven't had the right time of the morning to try this with my plane yet, but I have seen this on foot. It's a useful method in open fields when conditions are just right.

Another big advantage to using this as a scouting tool is you can investigate private property without setting foot on their land. Nobody owns the sky. If you see something worth checking into you can then ask for permission to metal detect the area. A handy way to gain favor is by giving the land owner a nice framed picture of his house or farm.

Here's a few pictures of an earlier design of this aircraft. I'm currently building the same basic design but with some minor improvements. Mainly a slightly sleeker body and a carbon tail boom to drop some weight. I designed the plane this way to fully protect the camera which goes inside the foam fuse under the wing. The first version of this plane blew the elevator control and spiraled nose first into the ground from very high, but the camera was fine due to the thick foam fuse.

It's dense EPS foam used in construction. Much stronger than what you can buy at Lowes or Home Depot, though that foam works well too. The wing is also foam and is further strengthened with a carbon tube to prevent folding. The fuse is sheeted on the belly with 1/8" balsa and this really helps strengthen it against most hard crashes. The wing is removable via nylon bolts for transport. To save weight I'm running the camera and video TX off the plane's lipo via a voltage regulator and this battery also powers everything else, including the motor. No need for a seperate battery pack for the plane's RX and servos as it was in the old days with gas.

 

[JOHNMARKHAM]

nice job.......electric has come along way..i grew up using gas motors..I'm 2ND generation modeler...are you selling these in complete form ready to go with complete systems??
let me know..i might be interested in a small system...
thanks
john

ps my ama number is a 5 didget...number..

 

[Cliff60]

Wow! Nice job and a great idea too! I would have never thought of doing something like this. The country side is beautiful around where you live, but "No" mountains that I can see. That would drive me nuts to live somewhere without mountains to see or look at every day.. You make it sound easy. I have "None" knowledge of how to build or put something like this together, but I do like it! Again, great job and a great idea.. Cliff On the other side of the world..

 

[Critterhunter]

nice job.......electric has come along way..i grew up using gas motors..I'm 2ND generation modeler...are you selling these in complete form ready to go with complete systems??
let me know..i might be interested in a small system...
thanks
john

ps my ama number is a 5 didget...number..

No, I mainly just scratch build whatever is in my head. A little design work on paper is all I really do. I get more enjoyment out of building my own unique designs than following somebody's plans. Sometimes it takes a few builds to work the bugs out, though, and some designs just are never going to fly. I never know until I build something new that's unconventional. I tried a Klingon bird of prey but the anti-dihedral of the wings made flight impossible. A bird of prey with only forward swept wings will work, though. Those look pretty wild in the air and they track like a train on rails. Goes right where you put it and stays there until you change direction. I've got a delta wing (flying wing) style plane that does close to 100mph. Very fun plane, but will scare you sometimes. My favorite at the moment is a performance glider I built with a 6 foot wingspan. It'll stunt all day long at fast speeds with the motor on, or I can kill the motor and ride thermals all day long with it. I glassed that wing for strength because carbon tubes weren't going to cut it to keep the foam from flexing. Once you build some hotwire tools (simple and cheap) you can build planes for pennies, rather than forking out $80 for a box of foam parts at the hobby store.

 

[Critterhunter]

Wow! Nice job and a great idea too! I would have never thought of doing something like this. The country side is beautiful around where you live, but "No" mountains that I can see. That would drive me nuts to live somewhere without mountains to see or look at every day.. You make it sound easy. I have "None" knowledge of how to build or put something like this together, but I do like it! Again, great job and a great idea.. Cliff On the other side of the world..

Thanks. It took a lot of trial and error but once you got the basics down you can pretty much build anything. I normaly use flat foam (meat trays work great) for the tail feathers and strengthen those with either bambo skewers (grocery store) or flat carbon (hobby store). Wings I'll use carbon tubes in or fiberglass rods. Great source of those is out of a patio umbrella somebody throws out. For the bodies I've taken to sheeted the belly or maybe the left/right sides of them with 1/8" balsa. Makes the foam even stronger in the event of a crash. Mostly I try to build cheaply, and will improvise with what I have on hand. The total cost of the electronics for the above plane would be about $40 or so in parts...$10 motor, $10 RX, $8 for two servos (rudder/elevator), $10 ESC (speed control for motor). Lipo battery is like $28. A good transmitter is like $150. Charger for your batteries at around $35 and your ready to fly.

We do have some "unflat" land around here. Some of my best detecting spots are along valleys and river channels where there are ridges and such.

 

[Critterhunter]

While in VA I am visiting a friend I flew RC with a lot before he moved here. He has taken AP (Aerial Photography) to the next level. This is what is called FPV (First Person View) AP in that you either wear goggles or watch a TV screen to fly the plane without ever having to look up and "see" the plane in the air. You are in the cockpit and can even pan/tilt the camera via movements with your head to "look out the windows" in a sense of the plane. You can actually fly the plane much further away than you could ever see it by eye. 1.6 miles away with the plane is the farthest he's been thus far with still more to come. To wet your appetite watch this first video: http://www.vimeo.com/9100042 He's flying at night in winter over a mall which was not open at the time. He's very legal and safe with his methods, though still crazy (hence his handle). Makes my "primative" AP setup look like rocks and stones low tech. I've flown with a live view via a TV I powered in the field with a car battery and a power inverter but he's going into building circuits to pick the strongest out of multiple antenna selections to achieve longer range FPV signals and doing things like having onboard GPS displays, voltage level, directional, and other vital inputs to achieve the distances he is flying at which are important when you can no longer see the plane with the naked eye. A TV screen is one thing but using the goggles really gives you that extra feeling that you are "in" the cockpit....

So crack open a beer (or five) and enjoy these videos. At least watch the first one and you'll be shocked...


Flying for a distance (and altitude) record: http://www.vimeo.com/9035088

He flys like a complete mad man: http://www.vimeo.com/10274871

Not every flight ends well: http://www.vimeo.com/10317286

First flight of a pylon racer: http://www.vimeo.com/9927996

 

[Critterhunter]

Yea, I can do still high resolution shots and live fly by wire video downstreamed to a TV on the ground and fly by "first person view", but I'm not running with screen GPS proximity numbers and other data. I could fly by wire out of view to the eye but these numbers become important when risking that. For instance, on screen voltage monitoring tells you when you better come back into by eye view or risk never making it back. And, he's using a signal strength indicator which gives him a good idea of how far he's pushing the feed before the point of no return. If the video feed fails you need the last GPS numbers (recorded on the ground via a video recorder of some type) to pinpoint where the plane went down. Not to mention he's flying via goggles which project a live image onto the lenses to give him that final touch of "feel" for the plane. In other words, true to his name my friend has gone off the deep end to some sort of extreme which some might find might find excessive. Since I get excessive in what ever strikes my fancy I can relate without being too critical about his passion.

If you are the kind of person who gets consumed with all aspects of metal detecting as a great hobby then I encourage you to get into RC electric aircraft. It's as rewarding of a hobby in many respects. Sure, you aren't going to strike gold with an RC plane but you'll find equal value in the friendships, relaxation, and hunger for knowledge that metal detecting has afforded you in many of the same ways. Without my interest in both hobbies I would have never met some really wonderful people who continue to put up with my wild ideas and unconventional logic to this very day.

As I've said before, RC is NOT expensive these days. I'd say you can put a plane together well south of $40 and a radio and some lipos will run you a total of $40 to $150 depending on how far you want to dive into it. Oh, and add another $25 for a good lipo charger. When investigating this hobby do not listen to most. They'll have you paying five times that for "brand" names. Read RC Groups foamie forums and then head over to Hobby City to buy cheap parts. Cut costs even more buy hot wiring your own foam plane bodies and wings, which is easy and cheap as well and will give you the added satisfaction of knowing what you are flying like a bird is something you built with your own two hands and an idea in your head.

 

[Critterhunter]

If you think you'd like to dive into this hobby here's a thread a few friends and I put together to walk people through buying your parts and building your first plane. We even cover how to build cheap/easy hot wire tools so you can save money by not having to buy pre-made plane bodies/wings. For me it took a lot of trial and error over a few years before I found the best methods of construction that worked for me yet were still very easy to do without needing major money or skill sets. This plane is a dual boom pusher that not only looks wicked in the air but also has some very unique flight characteristics. It's a blast to fly for both the beginner and the seasoned RC pilot.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_6910714/tm.htm

 

[Nauti]

AWESOME

 

[Jeff (IL)]

Thanks for the videos, good stuff!

 

[Critterhunter]

We did a little follow the leader with two of our planes last night. It was kind'a touch and go because of the low light conditions (darker by eye than the camera shows) and the bad glitching we were getting here and there. We kept the planes as low as we dared with just enough height to hopefully recover from any glitch out, though a few (shown on the video) were pretty close. Due to the dark conditions after sun down a few times I had trouble seperating my lead plane (red dual boom pusher) from the trees in the background which made for a few nervous moments as well. My plane is a bit heavy with high wing loading and a nose heavy COG, making riding at the edge of a stall a real "fun" experience, and Alex's camera plane was also fighting things like a tip stall as well. The best chase and near miss scenes were before we started recording. Stay tuned because we plan another video today in better light and at even lower/slower flight paths.

http://vimeo.com/10646596

 

[Critterhunter]

FPV is a blast! Both for IBCrazy flying and filming with his plane and me being filmed. I

 

[Critterhunter]

After looking at the glider video I believe that I either blew an elevator control or more likely the EPS wing (covered in fiberglass) folded about 14 inches from one tip. That area had a prior hair line crack in it due to the area being weakend from servo chamber installation. It's a very thin wing and the servo chamber must have weakend it too much in that spot. A little epoxy and perhaps a sunken carbon tube across this weaker area near both tips should fix things up just fine.

From my view on the ground it looked to me like the plane went into a tip stall due to a motor shut down as I was just above stall speed doing the circuits and the plane is very tail heavy. Now that I see the video it sure does look like she rolled over into sort'a a half loop due to either the wing giving way or an aileron servo failure. I thought the wing damage seen on the ground was due to the impact but now I think it's down to one of the two.

After it rolled over and righted it's self just above the trees it was beginning to stall on me. I yoked the elevator to try to get just a bit more elevation to clear the treetops and this produced a second stall that brought certain death. At least it hit the grass.

The Stryker needs two new elevons, a magnet, and just a pinch of foam under the front of the canopy where the majority of the impact was. That's why the magnet and a small bit of foam was lost. Surprised the one piece canopy didn't shatter but joining it with flat carbon really keeps things solid. The white discoloration on the one fin was a prior scuff. I'm real surprised these stock fins (about an inch cut off the tops) didn't get torn up or at least thrown off on impact. Leading edge where it appears to have a ding is really only some wrinkle from the sloppy leading edge tape installation when building the plane.

Impact with another plane, full throttle into a tree, and then falling to the ground from high up there, I couldn't be happier with the Bullet Proof mods of Dark Side days gone by (another forum & another topic) that I've compiled from others or developed myself for this plane. Keep in mind he hit me with a fiberglass wing!

Forgive me for any fuzzy references or out of context remarks as I've written these messages with the intention to post in several RC and non-RC related websites.

 

[grumpyolman]

John, I fly helis too. Although I have finally given it up. The skill required is nerve racking specially with the potential cost of a crash looming over your head. I still have a couple of CX2s I'm trying to get rid of and a DX-7 Heli Transmitter. People probably wouldn't believe there are flight simulators for these RC aircraft and they are necessary. It's certainly not as easy as folks make it look.

 

[lafatlife]

having watched these planes flying behind one of our local dams, I am absolutely amazed at how far they can go. I think that is just awesome that you build them yourself as well. What a great hobby especially with the cameras added.

 

[Critterhunter]

Thanks. Update on my friend's long distance record- TWO MILES AWAY yesterday! He's really pushing transmitter/receiver distance but he's got a strength indicator on screen and said the signals were still strong!

 

[Critterhunter]

Here's a few pictures of where I was flying down in VA for the second visit. It's just about one of the most perfect flying spots I've seen, with a great view, sloping downward field that makes launches less tricky thanks to the higher elevation of the launch area, a gravel road to use as a landing strip for planes with landing gear, and plenty of open space to put a plane down should something go wrong in flight. The view of the Blue Ridge mountains was something else, not to mention the red sunset that I wish I would have taken a few pictures of. The dual boomer did fine and my glider was fixed from the last trip and had no problems. We had a great time.

You can also see the 2000 Ranger I just got a great deal on for $4400. The guy in the pictures is my friend Alex getting ready to launch another FPV flight. The telephone pole is strung with Christmas tree lights and from what I hear you can see that thing for miles around. This property is owned by the local church. What I found curious was the fire pit. It's gas powered. Out in the middle of no where and they are using gas for a fake fire. That just didn't seem right to me, but I guess when you've got money to burn you can do odd things like this.

 

[Critterhunter]

A few more...