Thing 1 and Thing 2, Drones before the term "Drone" replaced UAV

[Cave Johnson]

This is sort of an odd thing, but it will probably become more common.

Over a decade ago, I was given Thing 1 and Thing 2. They were property of a battle lab, back before the term "Drone" was coined. They are balsa wood, plastic wrapped, remote control airplanes, with the setup for cameras ect.

Kinda silly, but one day, there will be a forum thread like this for people with repurposed drones. Possibly packbots and other remote control toys. (Thats already true, I made sure a local HS got a packbot)



We have cone a loooooong way in 2 decades.

 

[patracy]

Electric or gas powered?

 

[marchplumber]

Electric or gas powered?

I guess gas powered........I imagine batteries were heavy and short lived back then. Had to be used to power the cameras and controls though......

 

[Cave Johnson]

Electric or gas powered?

If you want it to be specific, "nitro", which is gas and oil. It's just specific to very tiny 2 stroke engines. I never checked but it might just be the same mixture you put in a weed eater but marked up. Its more volatile than diesel for sure.

marchplumber is correct about batteries. They still dont have the energy density to be worth much for distance. They were trying for the longest time to get off nitro and into a diesel system, same time they were trying to get "hover and stare" capability. That was the T-mav (transitional military air vehicle as I recall) vs the never complete d-mav, which was going to be diesel powered.

Its funny how all that went away faster than dust in the wind when people started making quad rotors as toys.

These were still using analog cameras as well. I have another toy that uses those. A Remington Eyeball system. The gimmick was great at the time. Pull the pin, throw the ball through a window, spin around the camera to see what was going on in the place you threw it. It also was a flash in the pan product, but it was the only one that troops didnt scoff at while saying they would rather have more ammo.

 

[sigo]

Drone didn’t replace UA, UAV or UAS. Those are still proper terms. Drone is slang or just a general name for when someone chooses to use a less descriptive term. It’s been popularized by the media so it seems more common than it used to be.