What is this other thing?

[IronWing]

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Those are for secret communications between the mothership and the black helicopters. You're not supposed to be able to see them, expect a knock on your door any minute now.

 

[PottedMeat]

theres probably one of those genetic algorithm generated screwy looking antennas under the black housing

or they're the new cylon raiders

 

[cbrunny]

This is actually apparatus for the sexlympics. Those bars are gymnastidildos. The big C shaped things are used to hold & rotate cameras at proper angles for the judges but looks like they haven't been fully set up yet.

 

[IronWing]

Apparently it's a circular polarized omni half loop antenna. I can't find any commercial versions though. All the pics I find are home-builds.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The T bars look like dipoles but I don't see any wires or waveguides going to them which is odd. The black ones look like GPS style antennas (but too big for GPS) and using wave guide rather than coax, possibly to gather data from weather satellites? Basically that shape makes the polarization and direction not matter, so ideal for satellites moving in space.

 

[Charmonium]

Apparently it's a circular polarized omni half loop antenna. I can't find any commercial versions though. All the pics I find are home-builds.

I didn't know the name but those look like the receivers you see in directional UHF antennas. My guess is that by having them point in opposite directions, you convert 2 directional antennas to one omnidirectional one.

 

[Paratus]

I could fly my drone 30 miles with an antenna like that.

 

[Charmonium]

I could fly my drone 30 miles with an antenna like that.

It's interesting that you mention that. I always thought the best way to control a drone, especially if you wanted to do something unsavory, would be to have a live video feed over the cellular network and send commands, get telemetry the same way. Are there any drones that do that or are they all radio controlled?

 

[Red Squirrel]

It's interesting that you mention that. I always thought the best way to control a drone, especially if you wanted to do something unsavory, would be to have a live video feed over the cellular network and send commands, get telemetry the same way. Are there any drones that do that or are they all radio controlled?

It's crossed my mind too, I think it would be doable if you used one of those dongles for data then just made the controls IP based. Problem is it would cost a ridiculous amount of money as it would not take very long to go over the data limit. At that point it would be cheaper to just fly a real plane.