Flight pattern for helicopters when doing thermal imaging?

[krustytheclown]

I will agree with SHO. The assumption a 52" TV puts off the same amount of heat as a 400W lamp is ridiculous.

The fuckers were definitely no more than 200 feet overhead. It was very loud.

Wish I had some counter-surveillance training to spot/lose a tail (provided a helicopter wasn't blacked out and following me to make the dump).

And with modern technology, the resolution of FLIR is quite good. Ever see high-resolution footage of the night vision used when Army helicopters kill Iraqis at night? Very detailed.

Regarding the cost of police helicopters: most major metropolitan cities have 1 or more police helicopters airborne at all times during the night. And since a helicopter can travel from one end of the city to another in a matter of a couple of minutes...well...the cost and time involved to swing by my place and do a quick, 2-3 minute thermal scan with equipment that's already on the helicopter for a potential felony collar seems like a no-brainer. If it was a slow night and they weren't on a call, why not swing by for a quick "visit"? At least, that's what I would think if I was managing the helicopter fleet or was a DA.

I'd rather pull the plants and clean out the place and be without any weed, as opposed to getting convicted of a felony.

No weed? Sucks but not the end of the world.
Convicted of a felony because I think "It won't happen to me"? Preventable and fucking stupid.

 

[good drown]

Personally I just love living under the flight path of the local medivac helicopter.

ahhah me too man

 

[good drown]

i also highly doubt they are in the air most of the night like you say.
most police helicopters clock in around 1000 flight hours a year.
not many places can afford to much more than that. helicopters are quite expensive.. all moving parts have a "life" engines and transmissions are like 1200 hours and thats something like $500,000
also if they were flying all night, thats $10,000 a night. why would they keep the copter in the air when its not being used? they wouldnt. copters aren't also free to scan the skies, thats a myth.
i imagine someone ratted on you

 

[NorCalFor20]

good drown

now get rid of those lights and nutes they have resin on them ditch your whole cab to just put the stuff some ware safe for awhile

L OH FUCKING L he had a 400w GROW THATS PRACTICALLY A MICRO GROW...

if you guys are that fucking paranoid you should quit smoking/growing pot because it has obviously gotten to you....

there are murders, rapes, assaults, meth being made, herion being shot up, and crackheads cooking crack and you think they're worried about your 400w grow?

I had cops knocking on my door (Not in California either I've been here less than a year) with a 400w grow in my closet tellling me they smelled pot and to let them in i told them to fuck off, and they never came back i didn't chop my grow or anything i just went and got a can of ozium this is back before i knew what carbon filters or negative pressure was.... Just quit living your lives in fear people.

 

[GreenintheThumb]

You're right krusty the resolution of the FLIR is excellent. They don't have to buzz your house and wake up the neighbors to scan you. They don't want you to be aware you're under investigation. I wouldn't be worried about this and follow what NorCal says.

 

[FrankRizzo]

Well I guess it's better to be safe then sorry. If I were in your shoes, which is easy for me to say from my couch. I wouldn't get rid of anything else. If they really are after you then you should get that cab up and running with some veggies in it. If you shut/break it down then it makes you look even more like you where up to no good.

Fill it up with whatever and if they do kick in your door (which I don't think will happen) then they are going to look ridiculous. You call the local media and tell them the cops kicked in your door in order to bust you for growin peppers and lettuce. Food prices are on the rise and you are just trying to save some money. If that all happened I bet they would never bother you again.

While some may feel you jumped the gun, you gotta do whatever will let you sleep at night. I agree that a 400w grow is nothing and I would hope that the leo in your area would have better things to do. Screw hiding that shit though. You already lost your plants you might as well at least keep moving forward. Nothing happens in a month then you have a few veggies that you've grown and you start up your next grow of mj.

 

[good drown]

i love how you guys say its no big deal and how stupid he was for trashing them, but yet offer no reasonable suggestion as to why a helicopter would fly so low over a house 2 days in a row.
looking for suspects is not even close, they were WAY to low. i'd say counting plants or trying to see how many people were in the house.
there is about 5-10 states that DO still care about any grow, no matter how "micro" it is...

 

[NorCalFor20]

i love how you guys say its no big deal and how stupid he was for trashing them, but yet offer no reasonable suggestion as to why a helicopter would fly so low over a house 2 days in a row.
looking for suspects is not even close, they were WAY to low. i'd say counting plants or trying to see how many people were in the house.
there is about 5-10 states that DO still care about any grow, no matter how "micro" it is...

there is no camera or FLIR capable off seeing a 400w light.... dosn't matter why they were flying low. i used to have choppers come so close i could tell what kind of mustache the pilot and to the point i could yell at them asking them what they want.... if they were busting you there would be squad cars there with those choppers.

 

[Ajunta Pall]

I find it hard to believe, Krusty, that the helicopter belonged to the police. Why would the pigs to fly so low to your house that you notice them scanning you? Thusly, tipping you off with enough time to destroy the evidence. Sounds as if you jumped the gun chopping your plants like that.

 

[MMAJAY]

i love how you guys say its no big deal and how stupid he was for trashing them, but yet offer no reasonable suggestion as to why a helicopter would fly so low over a house 2 days in a row.
looking for suspects is not even close, they were WAY to low. i'd say counting plants or trying to see how many people were in the house.
there is about 5-10 states that DO still care about any grow, no matter how "micro" it is...

You kill me dude.. Trust me on this a flir cant count plants or people in the house. Yes i have looked threw it while in the military. A 400 watter with 2 plants will never give off a big enough heat signature to look out of ordinary. Counting plants,,jesshhhh give me a break.

 

[good drown]

you guys are nuts man.
do you know anything about flir?
if they were 200 feet, i bet you could count them just based on heat not being reflected back up from the ground the plants were on, if its carpet maybe no, hard surface maybe yes.
do you know what you can see with when you go below the 20mk mark on ir cameras?
if you looked through it in the military and you do this, that must have been a few years back i assume, and depending on what it was for, it doesnt matter quite honestly
shits gotten crazy, ive done a few security shows, last one had 20,000(3/4 attendance were fbi, cia, dea) in attendance. needless to say I spent 3 days looking at the new stuff made by the most advanced companies our government uses. lotsa of foreign companies trying to sell stuff groups like interpol have used successfully last year
my fav were these ir cameras that were powered and connected through cat5. i wanted some until i found out the price
the shit they can do with new technology is scary

and to say they cant even see a 400w light, well how do you KNOW this? until we know what equiment is in that copter, you dont know. it could be old crap, but bottom line is

he was growing, copter flew over his house 2 days in a row, way to low to be doing anything. that alone is pretty crazy. how many people even have to worry about helicopters flying over their house? growers...

by law they need a warrant to scan, so they got one and scanned. they got REALLY close and stayed for 2 minutes. just long enough to record and narrate your findings. If they are looking for a grow with a copter, they CAN find a 400watter.
just because it uses the energy of a 32" plasma, the heat is another story, and thats how IR works. that bulb itself is very very hot, being on the top floor you WILL see the bulb, HID bulbs stand out like crazy because the heat inside them. also if the room is 5-10 degrees warmer, they can tell that as well.

if they were way high up and just flying around, you are correct, they wont see a 400w. but when you get that warrant, and they get that close, they see alot more.

and to say its not a police helicopter, well what would it be? i have alot of knowledge on helicopters, and well you only really see 3 kinds. police, hospital, and military. most private pilots fly planes, and small ones. also, the only one that would fly 200ft from his house and not get in trouble is police, hospital(if they were landing) and military.

 

[MrBomDiggitty]

there are murders, rapes, assaults, meth being made, herion being shot up, and crackheads cooking crack and you think they're worried about your 400w grow?

so does anyone know if people making meth would give off a similar heat signature as someone growing with a 400w HID lamp? maybe they thought something else was going on.

who knows?

better safe than sorry in this situation id say

 

[SpacedCWBY]

Personally I just love living under the flight path of the local medivac helicopter.

You got that problem too, eh?

 

[wuzzenme]

Funny, As I was reading this a chopper just flew over, but not too close. It does make you paranoid. At least it does me...

 

[SpacedCWBY]

A window company that I used to work for takes thermal pics of clients homes to use for demos. You'll see a pic of a house with old crappy windows All blue on the walls then around the windows and the windows themselves, it's red indicating heat. Also shows up red around any "hot spots" that are leaking heat. Then take Barry Cooper's video footage of black/white FLIR and you can see the hot air blowing from a vent showing up bright white - all you could see was the vent which was showing heat and the heat itself. You didn't see inside the house nor did you see a hot spot on the outside of the hosue. Now, look at the show DEA's b/w footage of a grow house caught on camera from a whirlybird (owner was selling drigs and doing other things indicative of a grow) and you see his foundation wall lit up bright white when compared to his neighbors foundations. Put all these together and you can get a pretty good idea as to how this stuff works.

They read the heat on the surface, they aren't x-ray machines and they can't see you banging your wife even though your room might show up hotter in that case. What they do see is warm spots on the outside of your house. Be it on the roof, the walls, the foundation, coming from your chimney or a dryer vent. The more sensitive their equipment is, the more variations they can see in the surface's temp. So if the fire dept uses a camera to find people lost in a burning house it would be much more sensitive than what a home improvement company is going to use. You'd be able to see the people's body heat if they were leaning up against the wall or within a very close proximity. The cops are going to have the good stuff. So what do you do?

First, don't grow upstairs - you want to put as much space between your setup and the exterior of the home as possible. So a nice central location in the basement is perfect. If you don't have a basement, make it a closet towards the center of the house. If you're in a single level house on a slab, make sure you insulate the shit out of the ceiling in the closet. It could make a hotspot on your roof when compared to your nieghbors. Second, hook your hot air vent from your grow space into the house's cold air return. It will take and disperse the heat evenly throughout the house so you're not heating up one room more than another. Third - I've read that they can only really use FLIR to look at houses for this purpose at night. Which makes sense because the sun beating on a wall is going to show up as a huge hot spot. So if you run 12/12 all the time like I do, run the lights during the day. I have to run mine at night though for environmental reasons - gets too damn hot!

Best of luck Krusty. Hate to fear monger, but if they were looking at you it could have been the upstairs garden that made it easier for them to find you, if they have... Hopefully my little speil here will help set your mind at ease when you get going again. But keep in mind, just like has been mentioned here, a TV up against the wall will show up just the same, but it's the whole space being hot that will heat up the whole wall is what will set them off. The TV won't heat the room up with radiant heat, but a couple bulbs will. In other words, if you're space is 10 degrees hotter than the next room over and it's clearly not a bathroom then you've got a target.

Speaking of choppers... Here comes that damn medivac chopper again.

Good luck everyone, stay safe.

 

[MobbDeep]

get a hunting spot light or something and beam it right at them next time they fly over just for shits and giggles.

Lol..thats CLASSIC..I sure as hell wont do that lol..

Ill post my ..being paranoid,especialy when your high and a chopper flied over your house..is completely normal...which is why I just cant smoke sativas..and if Ima smoke,its late at night,when I feel safer..if not Ima be peeping out tha window all day long..

The thing with FLIR is it CANNOT "See through" walls,roofs,etc..what it does is essentially measure surface temps..

I once was driving down the road,and came up on a LOW flying chopper.ALL lights off..making very little noise...and it was hovering over a house..it just looked really wierd..it was REALLY stealth,..I know for a fact that this was a flir scan..this thing was soo low to that house man..with NO lights on..

Iv also felt my hosue was getting scanned a few weeks ago. it was night..and the chopper just kept flying real low around and around my crib..and ofcourse right over my house..this shit made me freak te fuck out..I kept trning off the 400 hps just incase..so yeah man..being paranoid is perfectly fine..IMHO,its one of the main results of growing tis shit..I dont even like leaving the house anymore..

 

[anonymousgrower]

I thought this was a joke at first with how the OP chopped up his crops, apparently not though, good luck brotha and I hope you do get raided just so you didn't waste all that damn time and money.

 

[good drown]

the flir dea had could see bulbs. they showed that clearly before they showed that basement house. i still have that one on my tivo and watch it alot.
ir can go through shit, i've seen it first hand on cameras that cost almost $100,000
cheap ir filters that can be put on camcorder lenses an see through clothing, and that was 15 years ago.
technology within the last few years has really progressed man. barry's camera is old.
check out a security conference some time, if they are even open to the public

 

[FrankRizzo]

Good Drown-Don't you think if they had a $100,000 camera to bust this guy they would have already? Or do you think they they are waiting until his two (or whatever) plants got an once more weight on them?

The reality is we have no idea what that heli was up to. Looking in on his grow is a possibility, among a bunch of other things. I know the town I live in has a hard enough time trying to buy a new cruiser, let alone a fancy camera for the helicopter they don't have. Times are tough and budgets are tight. While I have no idea what part of the country the op is from, chances are things are about the same.

He did what he needed to in order to feel safe. Period end of story. Doesn't really matter what we think.

 

[good drown]

well they have a few million for a helicopter and the almost $1 million a year in maintenance whats 100k for a new camera or buying a better one every 2 years? engine or tranny is $500,000, and if they fly alot, thats one of each a year.
basically, if someone gets caught with mj and says he gets it from a guy that grows it indoors, if they have access to a copter, either county or state, they will try.
if you ever see a helicopter fly below 500ft over your property, and stay for 2 minutes, well i say clear out. there is no other reason that copter was there unless the spotlight was out, and it wasnt. They still wouldnt fly that low, they were looking at something up close, plain and simple