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Ernest Fessenden and his older brother Christopher followed dissimilar paths. Chris enlisted in the army in 1993, right after graduating from Shelby High School. Five years later, Ernie enrolled at Michigan Technological University and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science.

All that time, Ernie wanted to do something necessary to support his brother. Then, in 2007, he got his chance.

“My brother had done various combat deployments to the Middle East before, but this time, I in truth had a occupation and could do something besides talk,” Ernie Fessenden said. “Part of my brother’s occupation was to conduct vehicle inspections.”

Every day Chris inspected among 20 and 100 dump trucks loaded with rock and gravel before they could pass through an entry point.

“We had to creep around and see to it that not one thing was on them or in them that shouldn’t be,” Chris wrote in an email.

“I thought, ‘Isn’t there a better way to do this?’” Ernie said. “Many ideas seemed good on paper, like ground penetrating radar, but were very expensive.”

“Every problem I face, I break it into littler pieces that may be solved and build those into a larger solution,” he says. “You can’t solve all the world’s difficultnesses in one go. You have to solve them one little piece at a time.”

To solve this queer problem, Ernie consulted with Kevin Guy, proprietor of the Everything Hobby shop in Rochester. They determined that a Traxxas radio-controlled truck rigged with wireless video cameras would be just the ticket. Then he told Chris what they were up to.

“At firstborn I thought he was kidding, but a couple weeks later one showed up,” Chris wrote. “We ran it underneath the trucks so we could get a close-up view of the undercarriage and still stay at a safe distance.”

Then they started running the truck outside the gate at night.

“The camera Ernie sent was also a night-vision camera, so where our eyes were blind or there was debris blocking the view, we could now watch all constituents outside our gate,” Chris wrote. “The amusive thing was, the Iraqi persons had not seen a radio-controlled car, so they were genuinely frighted of it and obviated it at all costs. So, it worked two-fold: as long-range eyes, day or night, and it held them away from us, at a safe distance.”

When Chris was transposed from Iraq to Afghanistan, he brought the Traxxas along. During this deployment, he was sent on patrol, both on foot and in vehicles, and employed the little truck for reconnaissance.

“The Traxxas may actually go quicker than the trucks we are operating underneath the government speed limit,” he wrote. “So, it’s capable to advance past us and give us eyes on a target before we get there.”

The little truck had an vantage over most army-issued equipment.

“It is a toy, so it’s fun, absolutely,” wrote Chris. “But the guys here take the truck very badly when out on mission. She comes in handy and serves us well. Even on dismount patrols, we may run the truck with the camera up to a house, an intersection, a bridge … and get an idea of what’s there before soldiers are put in harm’s way.”

It regularly proved it is worth, alerting Chris’s patrol to three roadside bombs, which they were competent to keep away from safely. All that changed the last week of July, when the Traxxas took one for the team.

Chris had loaned the truck to six fellow soldiers patrolling in a Humvee who were using it to check the route ahead. While zipping along, the Traxxas’s tires became tangled in a tripwire and detonated a roadside bomb.

‘Boom. No more truck,” said Chris. The Humvee and her humane cargo were unharmed, however. “The Traxxas gave her all for us.”

When Chris told his brother, “I was just shocked,” Ernie said. “Then I thought, he’s OK, they’re OK. It works. Then I asked him if he necessitated another truck.”

Indeed he did. Ernie and Kevin Guy sent him two more. Unlike the primary truck, which was applied in the desert, these are waterproof to stand up Afghanistan’s monsoons.

Since the primary truck was destroyed saving soldiers’ lives, the pair has been interviewed by CNN, ABC, MSNBC and the New York Daily News.

‘It’s been different,” Ernie said of the media attention. “I always thought of myself as a farm boy growing up in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never done anything to wind up on the news.”

Thanks to the flurry of publicity, however, they have been with great success raising funds thru their Web website Trucks to Troops to supply more specially equipped radio-controlled cars to soldiers in the field. Each one costs with regards to $500, a bargain taking into account their lifesaving potential.

“As of right now, we’ve had sufficient to send 40 finish kits,” Ernie says.

“We can not thank you enough,” Chris wrote after learning he’d receive a replacement. “She will sit in the motor pool, in a place of honor next to her rather more spectacular associate trucks, ready to roll, ready for mission, anytime, anywhere.”

Michigan Technological University (mtu.edu) is a leading public exploration university fabricating new technologies and preparing students to give rise to the future for a prosperous and sustainable world. Michigan Tech offers more than 130 undergrad and graduate degree programs in engineering; forest resources; computing; technology; business; economics; natural, physical and environmental sciences; arts; humanities; and social sciences.