Lead’Air Introduces the SPHAIR MOUNT for Large heavy Sensors
Orlando, FL – April 13, 2021 – The SPHAIR mount is designed especially for the operators of large sensors, LIDAR, or cameras, that do not fit traditional gyro-stabilized mounts. “The SPHAIR will stabilize and keep your large sensors, LiDAR, large format aerial survey cameras, multi-camera oblique systems, and other systems, perfectly straight and level when your airplane banks up to 15 degrees, pitches up to 12 degrees and has a wind correction angle of up to 30 degrees,” says JP Barriere, President of Lead’Air Inc.
Our customers who fly nonlinear corridors such as power lines, pipelines, roads, and coastlines, have often inquired if we could make a mount that would allow them to bank their fixed-wing aircraft. They needed to turn and follow a curved line instead of breaking the project into small straight lines. As Lead’Air already designed a HELIDAS helicopter mount that can cope with 40 degrees bank, this was right up our alley.
Our solution is the newly designed SPHAIR mount that can correct +/- 15 degrees bank, +/- 12 degrees pitch, and +/- 30 degrees drift with most sensors and with airplane camera holes as small as 19 inches in diameter. This inspired design keeps the field of view well below the edges of the camera hole to prevent image cutoff. Thanks to a patented mechanism that is different from any other stabilized mount, this is a reality.
This inspired design will allow your company to develop more efficient planning methods taking advantage of the high range of corrections that the SPHAIR allows. Flying smooth curves to follow a winding ground feature or following terrain height to maintain a constant altitude above ground is now possible. If the aircraft does not pitch or bank to exceed the limits of the mount, the sensor will remain perfectly vertical and closely centered in the camera hole. On a so-called <corridor> project (meandering feature, river, road, pipeline, powerline, etc.)), being able to fly a continuous curved path instead of breaking the project into multiple segments requiring a 360 turn at the end of each run, could mean saving more than 50% of the flying time and production costs.
The arrival of the SPHAIR mount is very well-timed. Currently, the market only offers a traditional stabilization platform which initially was intended for aerial survey cameras. We often have heard that with some large LiDAR systems, this one-size-fits-all stabilized mount is not satisfactory because these systems lose a portion of their field of view due to cut off by the camera hole. This information comes from clients who approached our company inquiring if Lead’Air stabilized mounts are suitable for their LIDAR systems.
Why ask Lead’Air? Simply because Lead’Air has been designing and producing customized, stabilized mounts for more than twenty years! We deliver Lead’Air’s mounts with all our aerial products, MIDAS, MIDAR, HELIDAS, and others. We also make stabilization mounts for helicopters, airplanes, drones, and cars. Although stabilized platforms are not our core business, Lead’Air has delivered hundreds of stabilization devices in dozens of configurations over the years, some with unique designs for a single application.
Fortunately for the customers who have contacted us before, one of our stabilized designs, the STX series, was exactly what they needed. Lead’Air’s STX 550 and 600 could stabilize large systems like the Riegl LMS-Q1560, Riegl-Q880-G, even the Riegl VQ780II. Lead’Air sold many STX to LiDAR operators around the world. The STX could correct +/- 10 degrees of pitch and roll and +/-30 degrees of drift. Like the new SPHAIR, the correction of one axis did not influence the correction of another axis; the STX could correct the full ranges of pitch, roll, and drift angles altogether. The new SPHAIR mount now supersedes the STX.
Every system that we build and sell goes through a rigorous design and testing process where we digitize our clients’ aircraft camera port into a CAD 3d model to ensure we can assure the full range of mount motions.
Lead’Air operates two Piper Seneca PA34 with 25-inch (65 cm) diameter camera holes and a Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopter with a Meeker nose mount. We exclusively use these aircraft for testing our equipment. Lead’Air entirely designs, manufactures, and tests all the equipment that we sell. We operate a small factory with nine powerful CNC mills, a complete workshop with several manual mills and lathes, and many other sizeable machines. We engineer and produce in-house all our electronic systems, and our programmers total more than 100 years of aerial survey experience. In short, we are a one-stop-shop that is more than qualified to produce the best stabilization platforms in the world.
Contact Lead’Air for more information at SalesUSA@trackair.com or check our website at: www.trackair.us
