WarFlying

[Wolfess]

It worked out well. Tape the android to the bottom of my 1:10 scale C172 and buzz down the street. Used 70CM ham ATV band and 6m rc band to avoid FPV system interfering on wifi. Since it was a sucess i might get the battery pack for the ras pi rig and hang the antenna on the bottom. Got more signals and only wasted solar eleftricity.

Just thought I would share my oddball experiment for other people to try. Taping the android on did rather well.

[dnr1]

I will try this with my phantom 2 quadrotor. I will just attach my phone to the drone and do a flight over a premium neighborhood. since wigle works while driving, flying about 10-15 mph should be fine. the height by FAA rule has to be under 400 ft alt. I also need to be close to the ground to capture the wifi bubble- so probably about 80 - 100 ft should be fine..

[Wolfess]

Almost 10 years later and I have been giving it another try again though this time with the more stable platform of a delta wing kite. I used one of those smartphone clips to clamp it to the back of the center of the wing on the underside and near the keel to try and keep it as balanced as possible still.

I'm using the Prism Zenith 7 for it's extreme portability when packed I just added a third party winder to it that has a longer 600 foot dyneema line and a nylon strap on the outside with carabiner to make tethering down easier and more convenient. Taking inspiration from what DNR1 said and someone else doing the same but targeting commercial areas I'm tempted to do the same once the winds are a little less extreme.

For now I just did a couple afternoon monitoring sessions in an empty field with clear view of the freeway to log and mobile hotspots and all the bluetooth traveler devices that are passing through town.

[brockhold]

Hopping in to re-invigorate a newly necro'd thread, but just today I started putting together the bag of parts to go warflying with a small fixed wing drone, hauling not much more than a Pi Zero W, GPS, and a LoRa link. If I get anywhere at all, I'll be improving the antenna later.

[mdkFree]

Hopping in to re-invigorate a newly necro'd thread, but just today I started putting together the bag of parts to go warflying with a small fixed wing drone, hauling not much more than a Pi Zero W, GPS, and a LoRa link. If I get anywhere at all, I'll be improving the antenna later.

How did this work out for you? Also toying with he idea of using a toy quad and a phone or pi0

[Wolfess]

Hopping in to re-invigorate a newly necro'd thread, but just today I started putting together the bag of parts to go warflying with a small fixed wing drone, hauling not much more than a Pi Zero W, GPS, and a LoRa link. If I get anywhere at all, I'll be improving the antenna later.

How did this work out for you? Also toying with he idea of using a toy quad and a phone or pi0

If it has no downlink and you fly visually the original way it would work fine, otherwise the 2.4ghz use on it that close to the phone would severely degrade the reception and you wouldn't get as many networks logged. The DJIs now have a manual band selection and send both the RC and video over the same channel so you could manually set it to use the 5.8ghz band.

[Wolfess]

I busted the Cessna out of storage again late last year after getting the flying bug again and got new 9S batteries for xmas. Managed to get do a repeat of my old 2014 flight but twice and high this time. Went out for an early morning flight yesterday right when there was still zero wind, it would later pick up to 24 mph by noon.

Was a fun time got a good amount of mileage in and got an updated scan of what is still there, what isn't, and what's new as well as tons of bluetooth. I had the old gopro session cube on intervalometer under the nose right in front of the forward landing gear and got a few decent propeller free shots. Though I did strike the prop on a rock while landing accidentally, replaced it with a fresh one after I got home.

https://i.ibb.co/PGvTxvbk/GOPR0546-1.jpg

Last edited by Wolfess on Wed Apr 23, 2025 9:14 am, edited 3 times in total.