Helicopters, thermal FLIR cameras ~ actual crop shown!

Mare A Wanna,

Thank you again for another very interesting post!

WOW ~ 70,000 watts of HPS lighting?!
Yikes. I can understand how he was so high profile.

You mentioned a barn so I gather that he may have some type of farm, so perhaps his sky-high electric bills didn't raise any eyebrows, but his power meter must have been spinning off it's axis! This also makes me wonder if power companies are compelled to advise police or feds of unusually high-power usage from any given private property? And of course industrial buildings or parks would probably not be concerned with high power consumption, but there are always meter readers and in our city, fire department inspectors too...

And yes, I know that FLIR hits alone are not enough to obtain a search warrant, but (larger) growing efforts can emit quite strong fragrances and MJ smoke is quite distinctive too. So officers who 'happen to be in the area' or who show up at a door (or next door) under some other ploy may feel he/she has enough to justify a bust... and I recall recently reading online of a bust just like that.

While FLIR detection alone is not enough for a warrant, my efforts are still to minimize my exposure ~ so to speak ~ so officers would have (hopefully) little reason to 'follow-up' any possible high-heat patterns detected from my roof.

I like to feel that every investment I make in my growing efforts is for the better and that's why I chose T5 lighting... effective, great coverage, lower power consumption and lower heat emissions too.

Mare A Wanna, thank you again for a really great post!

SOGLAD
 

Bud Stankalot

Active Member
After re-reading your input to this Thread I checked to see what other things you find of interest and it was no real surprise to see that most of your posts are negative, attacking and quite acid.
This is simply not true. But that is besides the point.

My only intention in stating my opinion on this thread is to encourage people to grow. I understand your reasons for posting this is to raise awareness about FLIR, but I think it's spreading misguided information. FLIR is not used to bust personal grows. FLIR is used after the fact when somebody has ratted on you. We've already established that FLIR images are not admissible in a court of law without a warrant, so why would they spend countless man hours and large sums of money to locate a grow when the evidence won't ever get brought into the courtroom? Also, where are you getting this info that ALL helicopters in your city have FLIR. I highly doubt that to be the case. If they fly over your property and use FLIR day and night, why haven't you been busted yet?

Your analogy about the radar guns is still completely irrelevant.

Sorry if you took my post the wrong way and thought I was bashing you. I am only trying to give people reasons why to grow marijuana instead of implying that FLIR is going to get you. Ask any experienced grower who's been in the game for several years what they think about FLIR. They will all tell you the exact same thing. Don't worry about it.

One last thing, if you're in Cali, why not just get a medical card?

Happy Growing
 
You mentioned a barn so I gather that he may have some type of farm, so perhaps his sky-high electric bills didn't raise any eyebrows, but his power meter must have been spinning off it's axis!
Thats the most genious part about it.. He was using small electric motors to spin alternators that charge battery banks. Then the battery banks were hooked up to dc/ac converters to run everything.. So the only thing that was plugged into his meter was the electric motors.. That use hardly any energy at all.. Im sure he had several thousands of dollars wrapped up into the batterys and converters alone, not to mention the lights. But a smaller scale version can be made cheaply for a couple hundred bucks.. This guy truely was a genious and an innovator. He got to cocky though, he thought he was to smart to get caught and it burnt him.. Had he just stuck with small grows like he had been doing before he never would have gotten caught... He ended up getting busted again about 6 months later with 100 lbs of weed in the back of his truck, the tarp blew off while he was driving down the interstate.. He is currenly doing 8 years in a fed prison.. A little bit of common sense goes along way. Some of the smartest people I've ever met never graduated high school. Book smarts wont do you a bit of good if you dont have enough common sense to use it properly..
 

Burger Boss

Well-Known Member
Damn, that's pretty slick.
Sorry Bud, it's not slick, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!
I'm not an expert on electricity, But I do know that running electric motors from the grid and driving alternators, to charge batteries, to send it back through dc to ac converters, to power your lights, would be an incredibly inefficient waste of time and money.
For every kilowatt used by the electric motors, I think you would be lucky to get 200/300 watts from the converters.
Good luck & good grow.......BB
 

Bud Stankalot

Active Member
Sorry Bud, it's not slick, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!
I'm not an expert on electricity, But I do know that running electric motors from the grid and driving alternators, to charge batteries, to send it back through dc to ac converters, to power your lights, would be an incredibly inefficient waste of time and money.
For every kilowatt used by the electric motors, I think you would be lucky to get 200/300 watts from the converters.
Good luck & good grow.......BB
well, that settles that. I looked into it before you posted this and came to the same conclusion. I'm beginning to get the sense that 95% of the people on this site don't have a clue. Almost every thread I've seen is riddled with tall tales and everybody wants to get in an argument over nothing. I'm not knocking the experienced growers that reside on this site, but I think you fellas need a new home. Peace.
 

lemmis

Well-Known Member
well i'm not gonna rattle off a bunch of crap that i heard from someone else, but several facts i will. i've not seen 2 man heli's in my area all summer,(maybe 1), i've seen 3 in past 6 days. also, when looking at my plants by moonlight the surrounding vegitation is either lighter or darker than my girls. this would be clearly visible by naked eye from above during the day. i only have 2 together so hopefully i'm alright. now, for the rant. the taxpayers in my state,(Pa), voted for medical marijuana and they are using their money to eradicate mj. this is facist folks. scary stuff, wherev are we going?
 
Well you guys better do some more research before you come on here and start bashing me and telling me Im full of it... Another example of people thinking they are smarter then they really are... I'll do the home work for you children... The energy put into the battery is the product of voltage and current and
duration:
E = V * I * t
=~ 12volts * 10amps * 5 hours = 600 watt-hours = 0.6 kw-hr
= 12v * 10A * (5*3600sec) = 2.16 mega-joules = 2160 kw-sec
thats just with one battery and one alt.. now add 5 more deep cycle batterys to that = 10,800 kw-sec per battery bank.. and you must remeber the batterys are charging 24 hrs a day 7 days a week and most of the lights are only being ran 12hrs a day.. There is no diff in the way a solar pannel system works or even the windmills work.. They all charge battery banks that run through voltage convertors.. If you would stop thinking you know all the answers and listen for a little bit you could learn alot..
 

wagontail

Active Member
Nobody's arguing that it couldn't be done, just that it would be extremely inefficient as described, and nothing like the only thing that was plugged into his meter was the electric motors.. That use hardly any energy at all.. Bottom line, the 70kW has to come from somewhere.

Please stop debating this point. This was a semi-interesting FLIR thread before this kerfuffle.
 

Burger Boss

Well-Known Member
Nobody's arguing that it couldn't be done, just that it would be extremely inefficient as described, and nothing like the only thing that was plugged into his meter was the electric motors.. That use hardly any energy at all.. Bottom line, the 70kW has to come from somewhere.

Please stop debating this point. This was a semi-interesting FLIR thread before this kerfuffle.
EXACTLY! You don't get FREE, EXTRA wattage through a cockamamie system that LOSES energy at each step!
I'm sorry to dust up on your FLIR thread, but I wont let BAD information go unchallenged...Good luck.....BB
 
it was a very inefficient way to get power as far as over all cost goes.. like i said he had thousands and thousands of dollars invested in just machinery. The energy running his battery cells was less then the energy running the lights.. im not talking about car parts here guys.. he used industrail equipment to basicly make his own power plant.. Factorys do it all the time.. they would not do it if it was simply cheaper to buy the power they use.. In the long term it saves more money then it cost to purchase and maintenance.. When we are talking about big amounts of power it adds up fast..
 

Wordz

Well-Known Member
you guys are soooooo dumb everyone knows it's 10 times more efficient to charge batteries than use regular electricity. You guys should look into making your own perpetual motion generators that's even more efficient than batteries
 

SamNC

Member
He might have been using a small generator to charge a set of battery's to reduce his power consumption from the grid.
 

Bud Stankalot

Active Member
you guys are soooooo dumb everyone knows it's 10 times more efficient to charge batteries than use regular electricity. You guys should look into making your own perpetual motion generators that's even more efficient than batteries
I built my own perpetual motion generator out of paper clips. It was sumn badass. Now I run my whole block with it and charge 5 per house. Im genius.
 
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