Treasure hunting from the air!

[DougRecovery]

Is it possible to search large areas of ocean by "towing" a combined mag/sidescan from an aircraft? im assuming a helicopter would be more logical than a plane.
And does anyone know of an occassion that this has been used? i have been told a while ago that it had been used in the search for the "Merchant Royall" although since she is supposed to be in pretty deep water im not convinced how accurate that would be if at all.


For the record im not planning on doing it but the theory interests me.

 

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[badbrains]

I would hate to get that towfish caught on something while im up there. Wind turbulance, drag on the plane and the length of cable needed would make it impractical. Planes used as a preliminary search are invaluable in shallow water as to make out shapes, man made structures, etc. at the bottom. my .02 cents

 

[DougRecovery]

Yeah thats what i thought! a plane would just be far too impractical, but a "Helo" in open water!! mind you the cost of aviation fuel compared to red diesel would be just as pointless.

 

[Peg Leg]

Doug,
Use the old fashion way. Drag a mag behind a boat.
There is something NEW on the market.
I REMOTE CONTROLED DEVICE that you can attach whatever you want to and sit and do your thing with out cables.
Peg Leg

 

[mad4wrecks]

Successful magging has been done from the air, with both planes and helicopters, but mostly copters.

They also have vehicles mounted with mags for covering land (or beach) rather quickly.

This website is pretty interesting.

http://www.cflhd.gov/agm/engApplications/SubsurfaceChartacter/634DetectUnexplodedOrdnance.htm

 

[badbrains]

There you go. Great minds talk about ideas my friend!

 

[ScubaDude]

Thats what the US Navy uses the P3 Orion for doing sub hunting, airborne mag plus sonar bouys. The problem is unless you've got a huge mass of ferous metal it probably won't "see" it.

 

[pcolaboy]

This is how the Navy used to do it..in fact they may still do it this way for all I know.

I know of a surplus dealer that actually has one of these sleds. Even though the sled is pulled by the chopper, it has it's own propulsion as well presumably to assist the chopper in getting it up to speed and on plane.

I'm not sure though how well this would work for side-scanning however since there is pretty much a physical limit to how quickly a sonar signal can go out and return to the craft which means that a fairly low speed would be required thereby negating the benefit of an airborne method. Gosh I think that may have been a "run-on" sentence :-).

Pcolaboy

 

[DougRecovery]

Interesting so its feasible but bl**dy expensive by the looks of it. I think someone may of been yanking my chain!!

What about looking down in shallow water (which would have to have fairly good visability with a high magnitude camera) - the only reason i ask is because my dad got me into radio control aircraft as a kid and i just this weekend found a picture that one of the guys from my old club took from his radio control cessna and its pretty good quality. I figure that maybe it could be used like a UAV! what do you guys reckon?

 

[pcolaboy]

Doug,

There certainly are many wrecks that can be located by air visually. Like you said, water clarity and smoothness are pretty essential. However, knowing the geography of the area probably helps a great deal as well. Example: Some people may stumble upon a pile of rocks while snorkeling or boating and not think anything of it. However, if these rocks are in an area like mine that has no natural rocks, these would obviously be a sign they were placed there by the action of men (shipwreck, wharf, jetty, etc.)

My two pesos,

Pcolaboy

 

[DougRecovery]

Well i have drawn up some plans for the modification of one of my old cessna's to have a simple digital camera fitted, and assuming i can remember how to fly the dam thing i will take some test pic's and post them up here.

I know there's not much use for it in the TH's line of work but i like designing and building things, and you never know it might help one day.

 

[pcolaboy]

Hey if you think you can make it down to Pensacola with your plane, I would certainly love the opportunity to tryout some techniques on some known locations of wrecks to see how well they can be visually marked. I live less than 5 min. from the General Aviation side of the Airport as well.

Pcolaboy