FLIR Systems is advertising here!

[Brian]

Okay, how often can you get excited about an advertisement on a Camera Forum.

http://www.flir.com/thermography/americas/us/

When you bought stuff from them 28 years ago and find out they are still around!

Made my day. I visited their factory in the early 1980s, and we bought some high-end (for then) gear to go along with a custom Digital Infrared Scanner that we were making.

Maybe My Coolpix 950 and DCS200ir Infrared Galleries pinged the hit...

[s.west]

Our boys in maintenance have a Flir IR camera. They use it to check bearing temps on running machinery. Pretty cool tool and the lens has very interesting looking coating on it. The coating has sort of a rainbow effect. We took the lens off to see if there was a manufacturers logo or name on it. No name found, so I assume that Flir builds there own.

[Brian]

We had some lenses made from "Strange Material". Lenses that you could not see through. We even had a port window made of Zinc-Selenide for a P3 Orion. Big and Expensive. You could not see through it, but the Mid-wave and Long-Wave IR sensors had a perfect view. We crammed four Air racks of "Digital Electronics" into the aircraft to make the Sensor work. The air crew could not run the Coffee Pot and Microwave Oven at the same time our gear was powered up. I wrote software for a Vax 11/730 to make sure the Sensor was collecting data, we pushed the 200lb "mini-computer" into the plane while it was on the runway. Also programmed an Ampro Z80 computer to talk with the P3 Navi-computer. Just like R2D2...

Yup- THIS is the forum to advertise FLIR systems on!

They have two FLIR users already!

[s.west]

I saw on this site that the P3 had a "chin mounted Flir" fitted in 1977.

http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/types/usa/lockheed_martin/p-3/P-3_Orion.htm

Was this aircraft a submarine killer? It looks like quite a platform for many types of missions.

[Brian]

Yes- it was a Sub Chaser.

We ran our sensor mounted on the side, it was a research oriented sensor. The Forward Looking IR on the "normal" P3 was an Analog sensor.

The one we built produced 240x3000 scans, 14-bit per pixel, two frames per second. That was a major accomplishment for 1983. It output to 28-track High Density Tape on a Sangamo Weston T80 made for the sensor. Those were fun days. The P3A that we used was set aside for R&D projects in its "old Age", it was the first one delivered to the Navy.

The P3 is one of the few 4-engine aircraft that can stay in the air on 1 engine.