Pretty clever. Wouldn’t have guessed from the thumbnail (minus the spool)
If they’re anything like the ones used for cell towers in the US, they’re very obvious.
I have, in the past, wondered how practical it would be to take a highly-directional antenna and a camera mounted on a computer-controlled tripod head and then pan the thing around for a bit and create an image with a heat map overlay showing where the signal is strongest. I was thinking about making a map showing WiFi networks.
If you have some fancy RDF antenna array, which I imagine that military signals intelligence people do, might not even need to do the panning.
You’ll need a big dish or phased array to get that kind of directionality, but it’s doable.
If you wanted to do radio stations, which are on longer wavelengths, it probably isn’t anymore.
This sounds very similar to this project from The Thought Emporium
Add 2 more sensors and you can triangulate. Fly them around on drones and you could search the countryside
Even just one additional sensor if they’re directional. Even if optical camouflage of broadcast equipment might work in the short term, I don’t doubt that Ukraine will find a way around that relatively quickly. The Ukrainians are really good at this and, well, it’s broadcast equipment.
I’m guessing they could be seen easily with FLIR, but of course not every drone or soldier has that.
Hmm, how much heat does it take for something to become visible? A high power antenna will get hot, but if it’s a signal type that’s jamming resistant otherwise maybe it can use a normal civilian level of power.
Emissivity is probably different, and if the shell is thin and plastic, probably closer to ambient temp
Oh right. I supposed unless it’s absolutely cooking a thermal blanket would hide it decently well. You’d need to be careful the radio/microwave frequencies of interest aren’t blocked as well, though.
Edit: If it’s a non-directional transmitter you can just find it pretty easily from it’s transmissions anyway.
A receiver should be totally cold.
