FarArcher Posted September 9, 2016 Author Posted September 9, 2016 2 hours ago, Drew said: Bigfoot can huck a giant rock at you, but you can't get a bead on them? Why not? Where are these dangerous switchback roads? Why would they build such dangerous roads? Why did Bigfoot not destroy the roadbuilders by dropping trees on them and hucking boulders at them? Huge mining trucks could make it up and down, but the Ol' Ford Ranger can't handle it? I'm just trying to figure out where such dangerous places exist in the lower 48. It seems like there might be some embellishment taking place here. Can you point out where this place is? These critters are troubling. To be sure. But knowing that there are people out there like you? That's frightening. 40 minutes ago, Cryptic Megafauna said: You need to surround your canyon with a box 400 people in driving lines that converge, driving the beast toward the opening to a trap. Or you can use a squadron of black helicopters with FLIR and air to surface rocketry, the only problem then is you will only get chunks. The third option is lighter than air craft that can remain stationary over canyonlands and high altitude terrain listening and looking with surveillance platforms to map locations and movement and behavior. Or you can send in the recon teams cold camping on ridgelines with good optics and remaining quiet and surveilling and scoping with sniper rifles and sound sensor networks for enemy "er, cough*, ahem", Bigfeets. Maybe you bag one, make a new friend and share your brownies, or get some good footage and natural observation. The fifthe options is to randomly hike up high altitude canyonlands and ridgelines and hoping for happy accidents. While this sarcastic suggestion is tongue-in-cheek, thinking like this is exactly why all the big groups, all the big money fail to find diddly squat. Knowing folks know that helicopters in mountains is a bit tricky - and they have their own sets of limitations. Noise, being the first. Lighter-than-Air craft in mountains are very unstable, and with some of the winds that come up - they'll be blown across three counties - or caught in an updraft and possibly lose control. When I heard a group was going to hunt these things with a blimp - I laughed out loud. Oh. I was a commercial lighter-than-air pilot - so I know a bit about it. Cryptic, from your limited suggestions, which indicate a certain level of inexperience in equipment, terrain, and men, maybe you should stick to something else. There's always Barber College. 3
Guest Cryptic Megafauna Posted September 9, 2016 Posted September 9, 2016 8 minutes ago, FarArcher said: These critters are troubling. To be sure. But knowing that there are people out there like you? That's frightening. While this sarcastic suggestion is tongue-in-cheek, thinking like this is exactly why all the big groups, all the big money fail to find diddly squat. Knowing folks know that helicopters in mountains is a bit tricky - and they have their own sets of limitations. Noise, being the first. Lighter-than-Air craft in mountains are very unstable, and with some of the winds that come up - they'll be blown across three counties - or caught in an updraft and possibly lose control. When I heard a group was going to hunt these things with a blimp - I laughed out loud. Oh. I was a commercial lighter-than-air pilot - so I know a bit about it. Cryptic, from your limited suggestions, which indicate a certain level of inexperience in equipment, terrain, and men, maybe you should stick to something else. There's always Barber College. I was thinking more like retirement or homelessness. I call it irony. High altitude observation platforms can be above mountain winds and with advance enough optics are practical, look at the military and google for that. At low altitude you can use a tethered observation blimp or you can use a gas balloon or hot air balloon to float over your location if the weather and winds are calm. The rest are just what might work for a surgical one time operation with a high chance of success if planned properly under the right conditions but are unlikely do to complex logistics and costs and likely the opposition by the FAA, the military and the local police authorities. This applies to balloons and lighter than air craft in general as well as everything but a hot air balloon would be a red tape and logistics nightmare as well as very expensive. A small drone blimp that mostly floats would be great and can even be bought off the shelf. The two problems there are long range communication (the FAA and dot mil dont's want you to have long range aircraft of an experimental or even an operational nature with long range comms for obvious reasons). Lots of red tape. Housing, deploying, recovering, maintenance, transportation, repairs, cost of lifting gasses, on gassing and off gassing, protecting the vehicle when not in flight, not losing comm to the vehicle, and research and development costs make unlikely unless very well financed with significant buy in from local state and federal authorities. The easiest way is to do as a DARP research project for remote sensing and military observation platform and you can then get the money, the talent, and the authorization for airspace and long range comm. The problem then is diverting experimental observation time to looking for a BF. You would want to rent hangar space in a good mountainous area in Washington State near Mt. Rainier or St. Helens or similar areas and get some good aircraft engineering talent. The upside is you would get paid if the hobby aspect (BF) of the project did not pan out. The downside is evil DARPA stuff and possible bad karma.
MIB Posted September 9, 2016 Moderator Posted September 9, 2016 Drew - The first mountain was mined for gold from the 1860s to the very early 1900s. There were no rock trucks, Henry Ford hadn't even built the Model A yet. By the 1940s the area was essentially abandoned except for some small claims that are still maintained today on a mom-n-pop recreational weekend scale. The ore was partially processed on-site and the concentrate was hauled out by pack train. The roads post-date the industrial scale mining activity. The other mountain ... that's a good question, I don't know how the material from the top was removed. The present road was never suitable for a normal dump truck, never mind a big earth mover. There's a logging trunk, a very major one, somewhat down on the west flank. They may have used a conveyor, that was done here some. The current road to the top is a collection of hairpin switchbacks too short for a double cab pickup to go up without backing an jockeying around them. It was built to access a fire watch tower that sat on one corner of the leveled off mountain top. That was removed in the 1970s and the road hasn't been maintained since. Dangerous? Yes. So? There was no OSHA, little if any regulation, lives were cheap and many were lost ... that's the history of building the west. No different mining, road building, logging, farming. I'm not divulging the specific locations. MIB 3
hiflier Posted September 9, 2016 Posted September 9, 2016 56 minutes ago, FarArcher said: I was a commercial lighter-than-air pilot Hmmm. We could have some very interesting discussions on that.
FarArcher Posted September 9, 2016 Author Posted September 9, 2016 33 minutes ago, Cryptic Megafauna said: I was thinking more like retirement or homelessness. I call it irony. High altitude observation platforms can be above mountain winds and with advance enough optics are practical, look at the military and google for that. At low altitude you can use a tethered observation blimp or you can use a gas balloon or hot air balloon to float over your location if the weather and winds are calm. The rest are just what might work for a surgical one time operation with a high chance of success if planned properly under the right conditions but are unlikely do to complex logistics and costs and likely the opposition by the FAA, the military and the local police authorities. This applies to balloons and lighter than air craft in general as well as everything but a hot air balloon would be a red tape and logistics nightmare as well as very expensive. A small drone blimp that mostly floats would be great and can even be bought off the shelf. The two problems there are long range communication (the FAA and dot mil dont's want you to have long range aircraft of an experimental or even an operational nature with long range comms for obvious reasons). Lots of red tape. Housing, deploying, recovering, maintenance, transportation, repairs, cost of lifting gasses, on gassing and off gassing, protecting the vehicle when not in flight, not losing comm to the vehicle, and research and development costs make unlikely unless very well financed with significant buy in from local state and federal authorities. The easiest way is to do as a DARP research project for remote sensing and military observation platform and you can then get the money, the talent, and the authorization for airspace and long range comm. The problem then is diverting experimental observation time to looking for a BF. You would want to rent hangar space in a good mountainous area in Washington State near Mt. Rainier or St. Helens or similar areas and get some good aircraft engineering talent. The upside is you would get paid if the hobby aspect (BF) of the project did not pan out. The downside is evil DARPA stuff and possible bad karma. Here's the thing. I already spent months in this location. Been there. Lived there. I know the winds, I know the weather. I know the concealment, the breaks, angles, sun travel, shadowed areas, depressions. I know exactly what I need to feel a bit more secure than being in a tent, and losing sleep many nights with these things walking around that tent, then just standing there doing God-knows-what, tossing pebbles at the tent, and slapping at the tent. I don't need that. We were also greatly undergunned. Never again. Prudent planning is not commando stuff. It's just that I hate surprises. 54 minutes ago, hiflier said: Hmmm. We could have some very interesting discussions on that. The high wind landings were especially interesting. 1
hiflier Posted September 9, 2016 Posted September 9, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, FarArcher said: The high wind landings were especially interesting Heh, no doubt. I've seen photos of some very large zeppelin-types that unbelievably were vertical while tethered to their mooring masts. See? there's a lot more to me than most folks realize. I research many, many things such as the history of LTA flight to the present with stealth blimps being my main focus of interest. But to get a better picture I needed the history of design, innovation, and engineering ideas of all kinds including rare articles and information on a 1935 tunnel drive model presented to the Navy. Never knew what happened to that one but there was supposedly a trans-atlantic flight to the UK flight proposed. It had come out of the American Blimp Company based in Virginia. All fascinating stuff: if you happen to be a geek like me that is Edited September 9, 2016 by hiflier
Guest Cryptic Megafauna Posted September 10, 2016 Posted September 10, 2016 The zeppelin was the perfect platform, maximum lift for surface area, least resistance to wind. Blimps are just a cheaper knockoff that are easier to fly and maintain. No longer the golden era of lighter than air flight. They just crashed the dragon blimp and destroyed that multibillion dollar barrage balloon so the problem with lighter that aircraft is that low envelope inertia and modest propulsion constrained by weight considerations with the large surface area can't always defeat wind. Personally what I've researched recently is slightly heavier than air craft where the buoyancy can be low density when lifting and heavier for gliding at a low aspect ratio and long slow glides. Perhaps an ideal fuel that can be burned as a gas for propulsion and lift and for inflation and cooled compressed or released for ballast. So a lifting phase, a static neutral buoyancy phase and a low negative buoyancy recovery and observation gliding phase.
hiflier Posted September 10, 2016 Posted September 10, 2016 Some good points there CM. I've always been kind of partial this photo. It's the only one I've ever seen of this craft.: But I've derailed this thread enough.....my apologies to the OP and everyone.
Recommended Posts