Pirates Can Sail but They Cant Hide from Hood Techs UAV Imagers The Dutch Navy

deploys an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that carries Hood Techs i magers to search for Somali pirates. Hood River, OR, US, September 12, 2012 -- AvioNews carries a story (www.avionews .com/index.php?corpo=see_news_home.php&news_id=1144984&pagina_chiamante=index.ph p) about the use of Hood Techs UAV cameras to hunt for Somali pirates on board th e Dutch Navys HNLMS Rotterdam. The Rotterdam is part of a NATO task force off the Somali coast in the Gulf of Aden. The article notes that the UAVs airframe flies for around 16 hours, and that Hood T echs camera system provides live video images through its electro-optical/infrared system to support tracking of the movement of suspected pirate vessels. The same sy stem was used from the USS Bainbridge to monitor the pirate captors of Captain P hillips of the Maersk Alabama, said Lars Bergstrom, Hood Techs Chief of Operations for imagers. Pirate tracking is only one of a multitude of uses of our imaging s ystems, but we are always happy to know our technology is being put to good use. When Hood Tech began producing 800-gm video-camera turrets in 1998, it enabled a n entirely new class of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Hood Technology C orp. Vision, Inc. (Hood Tech) now designs and manufactures imaging and video pro cessing systems at the highest level of the National Imagery Interpretability Ra ting Scale (NIIRS): level 9, and has just announced new stabilization technology and electro-optical lenses that zoom up to 160X. This results in a field of vie w of 0.3 degrees, in a package that weighs less than six kg. Designed for manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), boats, land vehicles, and stationary mount s, the reliability and utility of Hood Techs daylight and thermal imaging product s has been demonstrated over more than 600,000 hours of use in a variety of temp eratures, humidity, dust, smoke, haze, and other environmental factors (www.alti camvision.com). Dr. Andy von Flotow founded Hood Technology in Hood River, Oregon in 1993. Along with the design and manufacture of stabilized imaging systems, Hood Technology: Develops, tests, and manufactures launch and retrieval systems for a variety of UAVs and Monitors blade vibrations in industrial turbines and jet engines, a dia gnostic method for predicting possible future failures. The Hood Tech web site is: www.hoodtech.com Contact: Lars Bergstrom Hood Tech Corp Vision, Inc. 3100 Cascade Hood River, OR 97031 5414909099 ken@hoodtech.com http://www.hoodtech.com