Gold Prospecting, 21st Century Style

[finnbay]

Plane hired by one of the companies looking for precious metals in the Babbitt area. Made about 20 passes over my house this morning.

Full frame:

Canon 40D 100-400 mm 320 ISO f/9 @ 1/1250

[MN Shutterbug]

Ken, are you hiding gold in your house? If the plane made 20 passes over your house, they must have suspected something.

[Steve Foss]

I think the were prospecting for all the Canon "L" lens gold finnbay has in his house. Maybe it's the flourite heavy metal coating on all those lenses that drew the high-tech plane's attention. Precious metals indeed.

[finnbay]

[Dbl]

Geeze they know where all the money on the range is! I've never seen a setup like that before!

One quick tip from the airplane dude Ken, get that shutter speed down under 1/250s, I like 1/60s or 1/125s and you get a real nice prop blur. With jets you want it as high as possible but prop planes look more realistic with blur and motion to the propellers.

[Steve Foss]

Ken, here was a grab shot of a pilot looking down on us while we were on Burntside a couple weeks back looking for a different kind of gold. Green and gold. Burntside lakers!

I was more worried about getting the pilot framed between the struts than I was about blurring the prop, as the 1/4000 shutter speed will suggest.

[Dbl]

Man they do anything up there to find lakers Steve! They should just save the gas money and hire you!

[Steve Foss]

Yeah, at the current price of avgas I'm WAY cheaper.

[mmeyer]

That's pretty neat Ken. What's that red thing they dropped in the last image? Maybe it's a marker to show where the gold is! Kind of like "X" marks the spot. I'd be finding that and moving it about 5 miles away just for fun.

[Deitz Dittrich]

It looks like that red thing is tied to the plane still... Very interesting to saythe least.. I wonder how it works?

[finnbay]

Dan - never have taken shots of a plane with a good camera before. I'll experiment with the slower shutter speed next time.

Mike - That torpedo looking thing is, I think, some kind of magnetic resonance sounder. Deitz, you're right - it is hooked on with a cable and if you look at the first two shots you can see two cables going back behind the plane. In the third shot you can just see the cable connection to the second torpedo. It was lower and quite a bit further back than the first.

Steve,

I see that is says "Experimental" on the side and I'm assuming that is a home built plane.

[yakfisher]

That is one freaky looking De Haviland Dash 7. It is likely experimental because the FAA didn't certify the aircraft with all that extra stuff hanging off of it. Definitely not a home built. It's a great plane I have a few friends who have flown them.

oops sorry I didn't read the side of the single engine.

[mountaindew]

Wow, that looks like a super jumbo kite!!

Steve, Bet you can see his face if you zoomed in!

Tack sharp on the props! Nice setting on the shutter speed!

[Finns]

As Finnbay mentioned it looks like an electromagnetic prospecting system.

[Dbl]

Yak the Dash 7 would be an experimental category as well for all the stuff hanging from it. I wonder if you can wear your watch when flying that thing or have any metal in your pockets!!!

[yakfisher]

 Originally Posted By: Dbl

Yak the Dash 7 would be an experimental category as well for all the stuff hanging from it. I wonder if you can wear your watch when flying that thing or have any metal in your pockets!!!

A pilot without a big watch??? You'll never find one

[Dbl]

 Originally Posted By: yakfisher

 Originally Posted By: Dbl

Yak the Dash 7 would be an experimental category as well for all the stuff hanging from it. I wonder if you can wear your watch when flying that thing or have any metal in your pockets!!!

A pilot without a big watch??? You'll never find one

Now that is funny