Mounted search and rescue

["Irvin Lichtenstein " <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

Actually you need aerial photos over time to detect changes. Photo
interpretation is an art, not a science and finding qualified interpreters
is a difficult task with the various services fighting over the pool and
many moving from the military to other civilian agencies on retirement.

If all you need is pictures there is a commercial service, Pictometry, that
flies surveys for a lot of utilities and local government. Our region uses
them every year or so to cover 5 counties at the same time each year. They
fly Cessna single engine aircraft with 5 cameras at around 10,000 feet
getting an oblique view and have software that overlays measurements on the
images.  They are available from the county EOC, and on-line as a service. 
We let the county pay the bill.  

There are also commercial satellite services-- SPOT, EOS, and some
government sources for recent images.  The idea is to see what changed from
before the person went missing to after they went missing, like tracks in
snow, campsites, etc. that a 3 meter resolution can detect.  In most cases
the imagery is much better than 3 meters.  

If you have some pull with the Feds you can get access to a Predator. But
often a CAP mission is sufficient. 

Irv Lichtenstein 
SE PA SAR

-----Original Message-----
From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Una Smith
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 12:43 PM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] motorized parasails and MSAR

On Thu, May 06, 2010 at 09:10:38AM -0700, E.S. wrote:
>base on my research  Powered Parachute, will be the safest way to go , we
need it for a slow low search non urban parks area, wouldn't you agree?  

Flying and visual searching are two separate tasks that require significant
attention, so there should be two people in the aircraft:  pilot and
spotter.

Wouldn't an unmanned, remote controlled drone be safest?  Texas EquuSearch
has
been using small airplane drones, by the way.  One way they use drones is to

record video or photographs of the ground, then have as many trained
observers
as they can round up look at the imagery.  The analysis can be done remotely
by volunteers, even by spontaneous volunteers on the internet.

        Una Smith
        New Mexico
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