User:Rufus

Hi, I'm Chris Gough and I hail from from Canberra, Australia. Despite rumours to the contrary, I'm NOT this guy:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/205982-Meet-Lt-Col-Chris-Gough-Killing-by-Drone-and-Proud-of-It

Instead, I'm a software developer, working as a technical manager for the Australian Government (Dept. of Environment). Among other things, my interest in Paparazzi is as a nice technical challenge to keep me sane after reading/writing documents and going to meetings all day.

My paparazzi rig is still an EasyStar, but I'll move that into my much larger QueenBee flying wing sooner or later... along with an FPV video kit (if I can figure out how to stop it jamming the modem) and a still camera. I regularly practice my manual control with an overpowered Windrider Bee (450W@900g, propped for ~40m/s). It's a bit twitchy but it bounces better than a funjet. I'm also gradually tooling-up my shed for vacuum bagging projects, but have no plans, time or space for a homebuilt CNC router (more's the pity).

I use a TWOG, 2.4 Mhz zigbee modems use 36MHz radio gear.

Long term, I'd like to routinely patrol/survey a farm taking geo-referenced digital photographs, and develop a ground-based post-processing facility to stitch/authorectify/etc them into a geodatabase... I entertain the fantasy of one day building an automated kangaroo/cow/plant detector.

I know a friendly farmer who lets me fly over her 300 Acre paddock, home to 90 cows (and probably as many kangaroos). I'm pretty sure my flights there are safe and legal.