Assiniboine Park Conservancy
Does anyone have an experince using a tethered drone or bimp? I want to collect aerial images of beluga whales that are being sampled (acoustics and snot) to determine numbers and group composition. As the field location is northern and remote and near several aerodromes it poses a number of problems that I think would be overcome by not having to activly fly a drone but basically pull it along at a set altitude. I have seen projects that use blimps but becuase of the remote location shipping gas will be a problem. Any advice/ ideas are welcome.
9 April 2018 4:45pm
Hi Stephen,
@Alasdair has promised to connect you with some folks in Texas using tethered drones, so sharing his message here so you're in touch with him and can chase him up if needbe :)
The border patrol in Texas are running powered tethered drones and reported 2 weeks in the air. I will find my old contact for you.
— Alasdair Davies (@Al2kA) April 6, 2018
@Shashank+Srinivasan , last week you mentioned potentially having some feedback on tethered drones that could help stephen? Want to jump in here?
Hope this helps!
Steph
26 April 2018 1:26pm
Hi Stephen,
When I was in the British Army we used tethered blimps at our patrol bases to spot for enemy or overwatch our patrols. Some were massive and others quite small depending on the payload they needed to carry. The cameras they had were expensive full PZT with real time downlink and could see as far as a 10Km.
They needed helium to provide lift and had to be topped up every so often as the helium will always leak. They also needed to be pulled down in high winds and a large clear space was needed on the ground for them to swing around. Although a great capability to have I would suggest they require a lot of funding to get up and maintain so you might be better with a fixed wing tethered drone.
I have recently seen drone flying in the Congo that was entirely controlled using an app on a phone/tablet. No pilot input needed at all. This meant the drone would fly purely on GPS and would not stray. The model used was a DJI Mavic Pro. It is so small it can fit in a backpack and has quite a good range per battery.
If you want more information on this drone I can get it for you.
Best wishes,
Sam
26 April 2018 1:52pm
what about a kite?it's cheap, it will fly forever if there is wind, easy to control, stable and no noise! from a boat could be easy to launch with a bit of propulsion...
https://www.diyphotography.net/kite-aerial-photography-101/
https://mashable.com/2015/03/29/kite-aerial-photography/#s4fKGRgsBgqh
Stephanie O'Donnell
WILDLABS