*** Search Effectiveness of FLIR ***

Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 21:15:37 -0500
From: Grenzstein@aol.com
To: sar-l@islandnet.com
Subject: Re: FLIR questions

Hi all,

First, thanks to all of you who responded both on and off the list regarding
my FLIR questions. I've learned a lot already and not only about FLIR. This
list is marvelous vehicle when used properly.

Re: FLIR. I have received both pro and con responses towards FLIR. I
appreciate the honesty of those who do have some extensive knowledge of FLIR
and conceded some limitations. I did receive some stories of FLIR successes
to add balance to my knowledge. Based on what I've read so far, I have
modified my opinion to accept it as a specialty tool that is effective under
the proper conditions, best used in flight, with a knowledgable pilot(should
go without saying) and operator. It is not a tool to just pick up and use.

I've been told that it sometimes does not work well in the heat of the day,
which makes sense. It also may not work well with a hypothermic victim in
cold, wet weather under a heavy forest canopy. Since there seems to be a
somewhat limited use for FLIR in SAR, I think a search manager should be
knowlegable of these limitations so he/she would dispatch another resource
to re-search areas covered by FLIR in less than desirable conditions.
I have two more questions:

1. Even though FLIR reads infrared images, is it also necessary for it to
acclimate itself to ambient heat sources, like the heat detector, to create
an accurate image?

2. If so, could FLIR then read false images if it passed quickly, as in
a 'copter, from an area that retained heat such as rocky areas to maybe a
cooler drainage or vice versa without having time to acclimate itself to
the new ambient backgound temperature? (I use this example because here in
northern NJ we have thousands of not only large, but small pockets of
glacial moraine intermixed in forested areas and "hogbacks" creating many
temperature differentials. I fear a person's image might get lost in a
pocket of moraine, even for a time after sundown.)

Thanks.

Pete Bremy
West Milford, NJ


                *** FLIR / Arial Imagery in Searches  ***

Re:  Image Enhancement (Stan Nowak)
Keywords: SAR Infra-red arial night search
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 22:22:56 GMT 
From: Will Flor, 1LT CAP <wgf@geocities.com>

Greetings to our Canadian counterparts from Civil Air Patrol! We've
coordinated with military  helicopters using FLIR at night, but haven't
used them ourselves. FLIR is very useful for finding moving targets but
stationary ones are easily missed. Last year it took many man-hours of
flying for two experienced U.S Army FLIR operators to find a crashed plane
and stationary survivor in a marsh at night, and the temperature was in
the 40s F. In warmer temperatures, it's harder. The find was only finally
made when we got an eyewitness report of a flyover from a farmer, which
narrowed the search area. FLIR is a useful search tool but it's easily
overrated by those not experienced with it's limitations. For water
searches at night it would probably be extremely useful, but I have no
experience there. I know that in the search mentioned above, it was very
difficult to distinguish the aircraft wreckage and survivor from clumps
of grass and wildlife.


Overhead imagery:

Re:  Image Enhancement (Stan Nowak)
Keywords: SAR Infra-red image enhancement arial night search
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 18:39:55 GMT
From: irvin lichtenstein <unknown>

I have used helicopter mounted FLIR (JetRanger, Messerschmidt 117,
Kaman SH2) with little success. This usually due to the sameness of the
area and or presence of heavy woods and trees.

Good images on film or disk require the services of a photo interpreter,
not easy to find even in the military. The desk top computer software can
help if you have it, a high speed graphics machine and the right
periperals to get the image in and out. (Anybody got a spare Silicon
Graphics 8x8 server to loan us?)

If you have access to a military photo recon outfit use them.

Hand held optics are about useless in a light aircraft and definitely
useless in a helicopter without stabilization The new gyro mounts for the
TV news cameras could produce some very good images with long lenses and
low light levels or amplifiers ....

Will try to follow up on the news idea.

Irv Lichtenstein 215-233-3360 voice 215 233-2343 fax. No e mail yet.

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