I see about four non-standard antennas, all for fairly high frequencies and a number of them "patch" style, and a gyro-stabilized camera mount that's mounted low enough it's going to be completely covered in crap when landing on slushy/muddy/dirty runways, but has a 360 degree turn ability unlike those mounted higher on wing pods that can be blocked by the aircraft. Most of those are computer controlled to track a point on the ground, so circling is just to keep the aircraft within range, and the ball mount and the computer take care of keeping the camera on the target during reasonably shallow maneuvering.
Probably not just daylight capable either -- likely has FLIR or other low-light technology in the pod too. Keeping it away from light sources on the wingtips at night would be another reason it's mounted down low.
A Cessna is cheaper and quieter than a helo. (And less noticible to people paranoid about "black helicopters")
Fore to aft, I would hazard these guesses:
- Two standard VHF Comm antennas for Aviation band.
- DME antenna, center under the back seat. (Edit: Could also be ADS-B 978.)
- Gyro stabilized camera pod, same aft station as the DME antenna.
- Can't tell if that's a battery drain or an antenna on the starboard area just behind the rear seat.
- The "straight stick" is interesting, too short for VHF and too long for UHF, and not "swept back", so probably isn't originally an antenna designed for an aircraft. But it does have a fairing, so... hard to say from that photo.
- Another COM antenna. Likely hooked to FM 2-way gear to talk to ground personnal on "company" frequencies.
- Tiny square "patch" antenna or just a fairing, but looks antenna-ish. Similar to GPS sized patches but on the wrong side (bottom) of the aircraft.
- Larger blocky "patch" that's "access point" sized under the "5". Interesting.
- Dorsal "fin" style antenna, probably UHF by size furthest aft.
Oh and two of them mounted dead in-line with the crap coming out of the tailpipe. Dumb. Should have put at least the one forward of "Y" in the tail number on the other side.
Looks mostly like a camera platform. Not even seeing any tiny stub antennas for hooking say, a "Stingray" device to, but that "straight stick" could be a multiband wide-band colinear antenna for cellular frequencies.
1. Orbit bad-guys
2. Steal Underpants
3. ...
Profit!
The rubber leading edge boot on the horizontal stabilizer cracks me up... if you're tossing that much crap aft, that camera pod is also getting it's butt kicked. Most of them "stow" themselves pointing rearward for landing, so the hard cover takes the majority of the abuse, but still... crud in the collar where it rotates and what not means, they're probably not landing on too many unimproved strips or fouled ones with tons of precip either the melty or the non-melty variety, when they can avoid it. Airplane probably had it installed before they bought it and added their toys.
It's also interesting how zoom lenses flatten perspective. Check out where it looks like the pitot tube is. The flattening of the depth of field by the lens taking the shot of the airplane, makes the pitot tube look like it's mounted to the port side of the fuselage just by snapping the shutter at the right time.
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