From: "gary ruben"
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 1:52 PM

… An Aerosonde is a small robotic aircraft used mainly for meteorological missions with a few other application possibilities like remote sensing and coast watch.
They've just been through a rocky period and have been sort of half bought out so
they couldn't afford me anymore.

From Peter Macinnis, in reply

I will follow Donna's change of topic.  That's a real bummer – or double, counting what has happened to you as well. My big beef with the Aerosonde people is that they have no idea of PR, or getting back, or letting people know.  All my information for the four stories I have done has come from people offshore. I am still waiting to hear what happened for the projected flight from America to Oz in October 2000. Insitu never got back.

For those who don't know, Aerosondes are neat little robotic planes -- one flew from the US to an island off the coast of Scotland, where it was taken under control and brought in to land.  They are small, they stay up for days, and they can stay in one spot for surveillance when needed. If protecting our borders is so important, why don't we have some of these cruising the seas to our north?

I know, Gerald . . . it's Australian . . . or sufficiently Australian to be treated with contempt in Australia.
 

17/7/2002
From: "gary ruben"
<< stay up for days, and they can stay in one spot for surveillance when needed.>>

> I've got to correct this - the longest flight to date is still the  trans-Atlantic crossing >which is better described as 'day' rather than 'days'.

You are quite right -- that flight was 29 hours, but I understood that
other flights had gone for some days -- that was info from Insitu, as
I recalled it, but it is not in any of the stories I wrote.

Peter
Further information at http://www.aerosonde.com/