On 2/12/2010 11:14 PM, John Leeke wrote:
> Do your knees ache from decades of scaffold climbing and timber lugging?
John,

This technology is neat. At suggestion of a structural engineer that we 
work w/ we looked into these helicopters in the US market. Will have to 
find what we dug up and post links.

Our consideration was that the battery/flight time is short re: possibly 
not long enough in order to survey a large building. And the copters 
incredibly expensive -- insurance wld be a problem. To insure the 
instrument, and to insure for operations. If one crashed into 
pedestrians it would be a big hassle and I can't imagine not getting all 
over the newspapers and tv news.

Another drawback was things like high winds -- all the demo vids seem to 
be in calm weather. Winds in urban environments, updrafts etc. can be 
hard to predict, canyon effects etc. And then there was the thought of 
dealing w/ NYC urban environment & how freaked out the regulatory 
agencies wld get w/ these things flying around. A lot of capital could 
be invested and then not be able to use the technology. Outside of NYC a 
whole lot of things are a whole lot easier to do. And 'security' issues 
in NYC, forget it. Even to consider potential problems w/ radio wave 
interference... already a problem in NYC.

When Kent first came to NYC w/ the rope access there was a real big gray 
area as to if the DOB wld accept the technology as 'rigging' as it 
certainly was not the technology being used to hang off of buildings. He 
managed to work his way through that quagmire.

Where it may have marketable use in NYC is in Local Law 11 inspections 
but it cld be a hurdle to get the DOB to accept that a facade survey was 
done w/ a toy helicopter.

Infrared cameras would be nice. Being able to shoot bb's and do terra 
cotta sounding might be interesting. And hook it up to a GPS enabled 
computer to set it up to fly automatically in a grid pattern around a 
facade.

It would make for a nice marketing gimmick but a bit pricey for the bang.

][<en

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