Something similar was experimented with where I live (western Sweden) to see if the technology is usable to determine the stability of soil layers against land slides. The area around the local river - Göta Älv - is known to be prone to landslides so it was deemed to be a good test subject. A helicopter carrying something which was best described as an enormous chicken run on a long line criss-crossed the area mapping it with what I assume was ground-penetrating radar. The results [1] show our farm to lie on an extremely landslide-prone part of the river valley and I know there have been landslides here in the 60's so there is something to this method. The subsoil consists of silt (the fraction over clay) on top of bedrock, as long as the water content stays below a certain percentage it has quite a high bearing capacity but once it gets over that it easily liquifies.
The Hackaday article is referring to Geoscience Australia geophysical surveys, Helicoptor VTEM specifically.
Fixed wing surveys are also a thing and more common over ground that is relatively flat, choppers get used for ground hugging steep ground - the cost per line kilometre goes up by a factor.
All the GA data (radiometrics, EM, magnetics, gravity, DTM's, etc) is available online or by request.
We have a MagDrone R3 and when researching it I saw a video showing a comparison of GPR and Mag sensors. The Mag sensor was able to detect the foundations of a buried roman structure as clearly as the GPR in that specific case. So, the answer is yes, this class of remote sensing can be used in archeology.
The article mentions the ‘traditional’ way in which magnetic surveys are carried out on the ground in archaeology. When it comes to helicopter surveys, the examples are only from geology. My question was meant to refer to helicopter surveys. I would therefore like to rephrase it: Have helicopters indeed already been used for magnetic surveys in archaeology?
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
You and I have different definitions of the word "bludgeon", and I see no problem with showing somebody a site rule they've broken if it's a rule you think worth encouraging people to follow (which they clearly do feel).
You put a anode x hundred yards away from a pipeline to stop it rusting. We used to send people into the field with metal spikes to measure conductivity to find the best locations. You want the anode in a place of high conductivity. This was used instead.
Personally I was dubious on the economics of a few of the things that was done on the project, doing this compared to using people was a no brainer even if it was $$$$. But all this money and as usual the SCADA was crap.
The rig was from mining if you wonder about it's everyday use.
[1] https://ext-geodatakatalog-forv.lansstyrelsen.se/PlaneringsK...