heatseeker capabilities

jojo · Guest

In the information section for AimSHOT HeatSeeker 3500 an example of usages is: Searching a building to find an armed felon. I'm tempted to chide you and ask you how it is able to determine whether or not a person is a felon or not, but I'll refrain. Seriously, though, I don't understand what is meant by the example. To what extent can the device detect heat on the other side of interior walls? Exterior walls?

Ryan_W · Site Admin Joined: 16 Jun 2003 Posts: 272

Hi,

These cannot see through walls of any kind. The example used is from the manufacturer's website and it most likely refers to the ability to sense body heat down a hallway.

The heat seekers sense differences in temperature. The greater the difference, the more likely it is that the heat seeker will find it. A person wearing heavily insulated clothing may not be picked up, or a person wearing normal clothing on a 95 degree summer day. It will, hopefully, be able to sense a bonfire that has been lit in the middle of a frozen lake.
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Ryan W.

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Guest · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:40 pm Post subject:

I did once manage to see where my oven (cooking my dinner at the time !) was as it had heated the outside of a filled cavity brick wall just enough (0.2 degrees F say) and it was around freezing outside. That was with a fairly standard thermal imager (not a seeker).

Gives you some idea.

As Ryan says you do not see through anything solid (OK except chunks of Germanium... <g>) , what you can see with an imager are surface temperature differences and so might detect them with a seeker. What sort of detection level can these seekers do anyway ?

Bill