Re: Area 51 burn out

On Aug 19, 10:58�pm, obviouslydelusional
<obviouslydelusio...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Aug 19, 9:40�pm, "m...@sushi.com" <m...@sushi.com> wrote:

I stumbled upon some really cheap data loggers on the net.http://www.onsetcomp.com/
Of course, what you want is just simple On/Off data logging, not
temperature, but the price is right. You can sink a lot of time
rolling your own gear. I only roll what I can't buy.


Onset data loggers, especially their inexpensive Hobo line, are quite
good. �Very bombproof and the battery lasts quite a while. �The most
useful is one of their event loggers (like the U11-001) which time/
datestamp when an event occurs. �You could use a state logger also,
it's just a little more awkward. �Hook it up to a simple passive
magnetometer and you have an undetectable monitoring device for
vehicles passing by on a roadway. �Wouldn't it be interesting to find
out if there were, oh, I don't know....maybe spikes in traffic on
certain access roads on specific days and times? �maybe middle of the
night? �Just a hypothetical.

Or.....replace the magnetometer circuit with a pyroelectric detector
and you can monitor passing vehicles OR people. �If, as you say, you
prefer not to roll your own, you can buy passive IR trail counters,
like the Trailmaster 300 for only $130:

http://www.trailmaster.com/tm300.php

It could be used to count people going up Tikaboo, or any other locale
your devious mind could come up with. �Note that the passive units
emit no IR, which would be visible to NV equipment. �And there are
fancier versions available.

All these imaging schemes are hampered by distance. They just detect
IR, which is subject to the same constraints as visible light
regarding magnification. There are some advantages since a plane in
the sky is significantly hotter than the background IR, so you might
be able to detect a plane in flight, but you could probably do that
with radio waves and GPS synchronized hardware.


It would help if one were under the flight path of the aircraft. �It's
pretty easy to figure out where that might be. �Reveille Peak is so
underutilized.....

I don't recall if I mentioned this, but even cheap NV gear picks up
blinker lights on aircraft. When you look towards the Nellis range,
you see the flashing lights from the air traffic flying over route 95.
If you camp out along route 95 and look east to the base, you see very
little flashing light since traffic is much less frequent.


And you can see a cell phone screen from 3 or more miles away.
Meteors are also spectacular.

One thing to consider is IR LEDs can be used as IR sensors. IR leds
are quite cheap, so making an array is not a big issue. I've seen
microbolometer components on the net.http://www.electrophysics.com


I am aware of a project to place something akin to what you describe
out there years ago, but I doubt it ever came about. �Sort of a "UFO
detector" that could scan large quadrants of the sky for heat
signatures.


I have some pyro film laying around with homebrew charge amp. I went
on the net and the film doesn't seem to be that easy to find. Mine is
a sample I got a while ago.

When IRDA went out of fashion, I bought a few hundred for maybe $10,
though people have picked my collection clean over the years because
I'm too damn nice. I took a bicycle type red flashing strobe (high
quality made in China model cough cough) and replaced the red LEDs
with IR. I don't recall how many miles I could see it. However,
leaving it on the ground during Red Flag got me no attention.

I suspect a B&W CCD like the Sony Exview would see some heat in the
night sky. It has near IR response, and the black body radiation tail
of a jet aircraft should go into that range.

I know exactly what you mean about meteors and nightvision. The
ionization trail is visible for maybe 10 seconds.