UAV for Meteorological duty.

[Pendekar]

Let say i want an aircraft that can perform meteorological related task such as weather reconnaissance and cloud seeding. Which is more cost effective? A manned aircraft or a UAV? Is there a UAV in the market for meteorological related task?

 

[Blackshoe]

Let say i want an aircraft that can perform meteorological related task such as weather reconnaissance and cloud seeding. Which is more cost effective? A manned aircraft or a UAV? Is there a UAV in the market for meteorological related task?

Not really a "market" right now (since organizations doing so would be looking for onesy-twosy orders)...but you could certainly build one-off models. Heck, it's already been done. Just avoid high winds...[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Pathfinder"]NASA Pathfinder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Helios"]NASA Helios - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[gf0012-aust]

Let say i want an aircraft that can perform meteorological related task such as weather reconnaissance and cloud seeding. Which is more cost effective? A manned aircraft or a UAV? Is there a UAV in the market for meteorological related task?

Preference is still for manned aircraft to do the job as the pilot still needs to make a judgement call

eg Australia has leased a Myasishchev M-55 to conduct high altitude weather research

 

[My2Cents]

Let say i want an aircraft that can perform meteorological related task such as weather reconnaissance and cloud seeding. Which is more cost effective? A manned aircraft or a UAV? Is there a UAV in the market for meteorological related task?

• Look first at your payload requirement. The bigger the payload, the more cost effective is a manned aircraft, and the more likely that you won’t have the option of an UAV.
• Endurance runs in the opposite direction, with UAVs being more effective than manned aircraft for missions over 8 hours, unless you have multiple crews.
• Data transmission requirements. Manned aircraft can do more preprocessing, drastically reducing the requirement, sending a couple good frames instead of a continuous stream. Finding a lot of bandwidth you can use can be a deal breaker.