roseofsharon
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That's an interesting idea. Overall, I tend to doubt that there was anything to see via FLIR because they were looking for two missing girls and it's clear that LE started treating the case as a possible double homicide right away. Had the operator seen anything that might have been a body or two bodies lying in an otherwise deserted area, I'm sure they would have checked it out.
I saw a video clip on Youtube of a TV show a while back about forensics that included some information about forward looking infra-red. I've been searching both via Youtube and Google trying to find it again but can't find it.
As I recall, the FLIR scan is not effective for as far as the human eye can see; it's only effective for a sort of elongated cone shape from the front of the plane and outside that area, stuff just blurs out.
I'm trying to recall how far out it can effectively see but I really don't remember for sure. Less than 10 miles is as near as I can remember. I do remember being surprised that it wasn't effective for further out because in theory, FLIR can be used to guide a plane in zero visibility conditions, such as in fog, and a plane covers 10 miles in practically no time. I remember thinking "boy, I bet that's a white knuckle landing."
FLIR only works if the object one is looking for is warmer than the environment. If the object is the same temperature as the environment, it won't be picked up. So once a body has cooled to the ambient temperature, it's invisible on FLIR.
The data stream can be recorded for later analysis. In this situation, I don't know how long they store the recorded data.
Did the plane seach while the lake was being dragged? It's awful when you can't remember details after only one year. IMO