The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #145483 Message #3366391
Posted By: Don Firth
21-Jun-12 - 05:33 PM
Thread Name: BS: Drones Over America
Subject: RE: BS: Drones Over America
And resuming our regular programming, during my stint as a radio announcer, I worked for a year for AAA (American Automobile Association) broadcasting morning and evening traffic reports over Seattle's KIRO radio. By listening to four city police radios and two state patrol radios, I tried to put together a report of good routes and places to avoid for commuters between 6:00 and 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 and 6:00 p.m.—a report every twelve minutes.
This was a bitch of a job, and I had to do a lot of guess-work based on listening in on the police talking to each other, and I didn't know for sure if what I was telling people bore any relationship to what was going on out there in traffic in the real world or not. But people kept telling me I was doing a good job.
KOMO radio had their "Eye in the Sky" reports from a plane flying overhead. Fred Garlatz, at the controls of his small plane could SEE what was going on, but since there was only one of him, he couldn't get an ongoing picture of the whole scene, whereas I could at least make a good guess from the information I was getting.
I keep thinking of what a boon a small fleet of drones would be when it comes to such things as traffic observation and control.
I don't see what should be so bloody expensive about this. For years, people have been playing with radio controlled model planes as a hobby. Just a matter of scale, and equipping the unmanned planes with a controllable camera. And, of course, a couple of operators who know what they were doing.
Don Firth