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The Civil Air Patrol is often called upon by local, state, and national agencies to help in damage assessment after significant weather events by providing aerial photography to various agencies so they can determine where to concentrate their efforts.
The key to successful aerial reconnaissance photography is providing useful images in a timely fashion with as much geographic identifying information as possible. Where minutes count, the Airborne Photographer does not have the luxury of taking a day or even hours GeoCodding aerial images with the information needed to make them useful.
The New Hampshire Wing has developed a process to automate the AFNORTH Data Requirements for CAP Imagery. Now, in the time it takes the aircraft to return to mission base, the Airborne Photographer can produce a thumb drive or CD of several hundred digital images, watermarked with geographically identifying details and the CAP shield.
The details embedded in the images include:
- Name of Target or Object
- Date and Time Over Target (Zulu or UTC time)
- Latitude (hddd° mm.mmm’)
- Longitude (hddd° mm.mmm’)
- Heading (Degrees True North)
- North Arrow (North reference on Photograph)
- CAP Shield
All this can be accomplished with current CAP equipment, including the eTrex GPS, Nikon D200 and D100 cameras and the SDIS laptop computers.
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Written by Lt Richard Cox
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Monday, 23 November 2009 21:54 |
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Trying to conduct aerial reconnaissance photography while in a 60° bank angle turn is unusually extreme, we wanted to test the GeoTagging with camera angle process in its most compromising situation. The thought was that flying straight and level would have no issues even with a 1-minute track log interval as the heading remained constant while the position above the ground changed. In any event, our driving tests already proved this would be the case, even with moderate turns on a highway the heading arrow always had a 90-degree offset from the direction the car was moving (camera photographing from right pasanger window). We ran driving tests in an empty parking lot and found that the direction arrows did not point to the inside of the turn circle. But, then the parking lot we used was so small that, even at idle speeds we were completing 360° turns in about 15 seconds. So for a true aerial test we had to look to the sky.
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Read more...
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Written by Lt Richard Cox
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Saturday, 14 November 2009 06:15 |
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As I work on the FAQ and Support sections of this web site, it has become clear to me that the demarcation between these two sections has become bleared.
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions are answers to commonly asked questions one would encounter when teaching this course.
Support – Are Answers to problems one might encounter when using the process or software related to this process.
So the question “I have a Nikon D300, can I use this camera in the GPS Heading configuration?” would be found in the FAQ section; whereas the question “I accidentally shot the whole mission with the camera in RAW mode” would be found in the support section. |
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Written by Lt Marshall Giguere
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Sunday, 22 November 2009 10:28 |
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Pre-mission preparation is just as important for the photographer as the MP or MO. Having yourself prepared and organized in the cockpit can greatly reduce stress, especially if conditions aren't ideal. Missions can come in two flavors, targeted and survey. In either case these steps can help keep your stress level lower and keep you organized.
- Review the training procedures
- Make a plot of your intended route
- Get familiar with the target(s)
- Make a queue card for each target
- Build a mission folder
read more... |
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Written by Lt Richard Cox
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Saturday, 14 November 2009 06:00 |
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The following is the 2010 release schedule for the EDICT software suite. This will include minor bug-fixes and enhancements. Critical bug fixes will be release as soon as possible.
- 11-JANUARY-2010
- 12-APRIL-2010
- 12-JULY-2010
- 11-OCTOBER-2010
If you encounter an issue or would like to submit an enhancement request, you can find a link to this form on the support section of this site. |
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