Jason Hawkes has a very difficult, expensive, and spectacular kind of work: he takes pictures from the sky. And while it may not sound very difficult, obtaining these crystal-clear shots while hanging out of the door of a twin-engine helicopter, everything vibrating like in an earthquake because of the rotor blades, and shouting orders at your pilot over, it’s a very challenging job that requires the best technology you can get your hands on. We talked with Jason about how is it done in this new Gizmodo section that we like to call “How Is It Done.”
newVideoPlayer("/july4th_part2_giz.flv", 475, 376,""); Hey everyone, just checking in again to make sure your day is going well. And you haven’t blown your face off with some giant aerial fireworks. Because believe me, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission: If you act like the mannequin (manikin?) in the clip above, the last place you’ll end up is in a hospital emergency room. Happy 4th everybody! [CPSC]
Getting an antenna into prime position is often a little challenging. Well, not anymore; checkout this awesome antenna launcher mod. Powered like a regular air pistol, it depends on pressurized gas to generate force, which then enables it to shoot a light line over a tree.
Cigarette-sized unmanned aircraft, utilising plasma thrusters for power, may sound like something out of the pits of science fiction’s B-rate movie bin to us, but we aren’t DARPA. That’s right the guys at DARPA are actually working with boffins at Oklahoma State University to make the vision a reality.
Three guys with a mission: use an iPhone mounted in a R/C plane to snap a photo from the air. The problem: you can’t make photos without touching the iPhone screen with a human finger. And a live one, at that. And no, the camera application can’t be controlled remotely using Wi-Fi. So how did they solve it?
AU: I call dumb on this. Yeah, technically interesting, but c’mon! Do it with a cheapie toy camera, not an iPhone… -SB.
