One thing encouraging to me is how much more data we have available now through things like eBird and radar, at a scale that couldn’t even be imagined before. Hopefully this leads to continued insight and action where needed.
Birds can also be detected automatically by sound. The Merlin app is highly effective at recognizing bird calls. It's been a game changer for inexperienced birders.
I've been using it for a month or so now and have really enjoyed it. It's got to the point now that I have renamed my mobile phone to "bird recognition device" and am actually taking it with me when I walk.
I second this — I love the taste of quality black coffee but the bad stuff really does need help (for me some cream). It can be a huge difference. Also the origin — this is a subjective thing, but I agree with the parent that single origin Central American is ideal by my tastes. Nicaraguan medium-dark roast, freshly roasted and ground. (Freshness is also very important).
There are prosumer gas powered ones coming out. My guess is it could be a version of this NASA project that can hover and then transition to winged flight. It's unclear how good of a look they got at it.
Blog comments are mentioning the fact that one of the choppers had to refuel, maybe a testament to how energetic the chase was, but maybe it was already low at that point. That, and the fact that there is an AFB there points to a military drone.
If it's performing maneuvers as complex as described, it must be heavily computer assisted or computer controlled, so you'd presumably need sensors, computer, etc, that adds a lot of weight. On top of that, the speeds they describe coupled with the wind they said it was fighting, it would need to be very well built. Given all the factors, I think it would probably have to be extremly extremly advance.
Computers are 100% required for motor coordination and other low level flight details with a multirotor uav, but in terms of piloting the aircraft a typical human brain is quite capable with practice.
Sensors and computers weigh next to nothing. Every piece of cheap plastic commonly used for building quadcopters fulfills your criterion of being 'very well built'. Nothing about your description makes a drone 'extremely advanced'. Just a hobby project of some random guy/gal.
It's nearly trivially easy to build one, though not necessarily cheap. Just replace the battery pack with an engine, generator and fuel. It may be necessary to use a turbine engine to meet requirements, hence not cheap, but for flight control you just need to use free open source software firmware (Ardupilot?) that has long been freely available and tweak it.
As a teen, I used to do this regularly in some woods in northern MN. On a moonless night I could navigate by looking up to see the stars through the gap in the trees, indicating the trail. I had many interesting and wonderful experiences— once a flock of whistling swans flew over and I saw their silhouettes pass through over. Another time I a startled a deer (and vise-versa) only a few feet away and it let out a terrifying scream. Another time a flying squirrel landed on my face while I was standing still.
Just be careful with not losing an eye on a tree branch, not so hard to achieve. Or just tripping over some unexpected root and ending with all sorts of injuries, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.
That said I've done it couple of times, but almost always on snow so I saw where laying my feet and on paths I knew I don't need to be worried with above.
> Just be careful with not losing an eye on a tree branch, not so hard to achieve.
There are probably more UFO sightings than the sample size of people losing an eye from a branch while walking. Probably in the history of humanity. How stupid would they have to be?
Do the branches you know prey on human eyes? Do they do that striking snake kung-fu move whenever they see a human eye?
I once got a corneal abrasion from a corn stalk walking into a cornfield in the middle of the day to retrieve an rc plane.
It was the worst one my doctor had ever seen.
You may be surprised how easy it is to damage your eyes.
However, I have gone on many night hikes, and I wouldn’t let that worry hold me back. Moonlight is pretty bright once you get used to it, and even starlight in some places.
“Diet and energy expenditure associations with adiposity demonstrate that only reported consumption of market-acquired “protein” and “carbohydrate” foods predicted children's body fat levels”
