Drone Warfare: Watching You Watching Me
I've been meaning to highlight the possible applications of next generation R/C planes for a while as we see an increasing drive with police and military (particularily in the US) towards the use of drone technology. It seems that CCTV and constant GPRS tracking via your phone among other tracking capabilities aren't enough these days so small drone vehicles are under development to track and follow us with particular use in large events and protests.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6676809.stm#graphic

 http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/01/british-police-more-drones



All seems lost until you discover that low-budget 'FPV' (first person view) aircraft are relatively easy to make at home and could help with many civil rights issues in the future.
Using over the counter bits and pieces you can create a 'First Person' R/C aircraft that not only is incredibly cool and fun to fly about, but could help defend political activists in the future and perhaps more importantly help provide evidence against heavy-handed






Baring in mind that in the past, Police who use undue force during protests etc often get away with it (the case with Ian Tomlinson in the G20 protests in London is one example of where evidence provided with witnesses camera footage at least helped gain a court case - but unfortunately failed to be enough to secure a conviction) especally in highly populated areas like protests where its difficult to get a decent view, helicopter FPV recording all which the police do could provide exceptional evidence against police brutality and also those dodgy cases where you see agent provocateurs mysteriously disapear through police lines. Having personally been at large, high profile protests it is incredibly frustrating when you see such misuse of power (aka, girls of fifteen, sixteen being hit with batons) and you haven't the time or ability to record events on the ground as it happens. This could really help in those situations.

Learn more about this awesomeness:

General Info:

 http://www.fpvuk.org/

 http://www.fpvpilot.com/Pages/default.aspx

 http://rcexplorer.se/Educational/FPV/FPV.html

Pre-Made Kits:
These kits are of course not the best, and you would do better with a much greater radio equipment and airframe but would be good for practice:

 http://www.hubsan.com/products/FPV/H301F.htm

 http://www.readymaderc.com/store/

Please check out the link below for included videos showing their application:

 http://eibsnews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/watching-you-watching-me.html