|
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.
|
FLIR in night searches 
Image Enhancement
(Stan Nowak)
FLIR SAR by National Guard
by safebat@excite.com, 2001, Sep 07
Canadian rescue service to use FLIR
by J.T. Hibberd, 2002, Oct 17
