This made me smile on a Friday, http://www.suasnews.com/2010/10/2096/suas-used-in-ig-nobel-award-research-sampling-whale-snot/ a prize was awarded to conservationists that flew petri dishes underneath a model helicopter flying over whales at sea to sample their breath.

Wow! I just saw it on Discovery channel, as I was recovering from my foot cramp I got from small accident.
That was a 500 Size Nitro Heli, taking off and landing off a Deck of a small boat.

I just added BBC video clip, thanks for the heads up

Made me smile too   Thanks for sharing it here, Gary.

Preserving the video link...

Thanks Anwar, its pouring with rain and freezing cold here so something has to!

I saw something similar this evening on National Geographic. Heli was used to collect gas samples from a Volcanic site, they had a plastic stool like thing that was harnessed to the skids, and this flew into the emerging gases... hope to find a video like the previous. The heli was a nitro and i wondered if the exhaust would get in the way of the research.

As long as they can separate the exhaust bits out chemically (they are well known), it should work. 

I was a bit surprised at how the pilot in the initial video was twisting his TX (and sometimes his whole body) when he wanted the heli to move in a different direction. It was funny to watch 

Yepp! The same video

The NatGeo used a little bigger Heli in their search to find the biggest Anaconda in the Amazon forests. Fitted with FPV, that Heli kind of crashed.

good to see people from different walks of life using RC models in their professional  quest.  

I saw that Anaconda episode too.. It was pretty cool..

enjoy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7723703.stm

Merged into existing thread... thanks for the BBC link

Had the creature surfaced it may have sampled the heli instead. Come to think of it, a small heli with a camera could actually get an FPV of a whale's insides .... any way the whale will launch it out one way ... or the other ;-)

More use for RC...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10704218