Balloons
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[edit] Tethered Balloon Aerial Photography
A complement to Kite aerial photography when there isn't significant wind. Like KAP, often done under an entirely different legal regime (especially for commercial work) than UAVs. Prevention of twisting may be done with a picavet, or with multiple control lines.
[edit] High Altitude Balloon
High-Altitude Ballooning (HAB) has become a popular hobby in recent years, as control solutions became easy & inexpensive (the Arduino project and competitors), and GPS functionality got cheaper. Using helium or hydrogen and remarkably little money, people can now experiment with conditions and views far higher than a passenger airplane travels.
A typical loadout might include:
- A 2 meter diameter (5 meter burst) latex balloon.
- A styrofoam cooler to protect against temperature extremes
- An Arduino control board
- A wide angle helmet cam set to video
- A small transmitter with helical antenna for telemetry
- A parachute designed to trigger after the balloon bursts
- A directional antenna on the ground
[edit] High Altitude Glider
There is some interest in the combination of HABing with gliding planes or paragliders. A balloon that lifts a glider may fall into different legal categories than a powered UAV (which may be altitude-limited) , but the lines are very blurry and there are significant legal questions of definition.
[edit] Links
- The $150 Edge-of-Space Camera: MIT Students Beat NASA On Beer-Money Budget
- United Kingdom High Altitude Society, the dominant wiki in this area, is supplemented by Freenode #highaltitude
