This week brings the start of a new semester and my senior year. We are currently attending classes in person, but no one knows how long this will last. This semester I will be taking the first part of my UAS capstone course. I will be posting weekly reports here detailing my progress in the class.
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Week 1 - 8/25/2020
Summary of Field Activities/Notes:
Course overview:
When I arrived at Purdue Wildlife Area (PWA) at around 1000 the syllabus was being reviewed in detail. This class will focus on a series of applied UAS data collection projects.This will give me the opportunity to log hours on a number of systems. The majority of my grade will depend on reports such as these this semester.
C-Astral Bramor demo:
At 1047 the Bramor was launched. The three man team consisted of a pilot, flight engineer and visual observer. Communication between these roles was continuous and crucial to a successful operation. Zello was mentioned to be helpful. It’s an app that allows a phone to operate as a walkie talkie. I was told that during critical stages of flight such as take off and landing to not interrupt the flight crew and not enter the flight staging area. They have a checklist to go over and it is easy to miss things. Once the Bramor is airborne the only control the crew has is return to the rally point and whether or not to pull the parachute, so it is crucial to do all planning *before* takeoff. I was also warned not to power on the combox without the antenna on the box or the aircraft or I risk frying all nearby electronics.
The camera onboard today is a 42 megapixel full frame Sony RX1 with a 35mm lens. The lens focus is slightly off of infinity. Other settings are:
Shutter speed: 1600
Aperture: 4.5F
ISO: 100
DJI Matrice 210 demo:
The DJI Matrice is essentially a large Mavic 2 with dual controls. One person flies the UAV and the other controls the camera. Today I was able to step up and take control of the camera. As someone who frequently flies a Mavic Pro Platinum, it is easy to see how dual control can be very useful for getting perfect cinematic shots or more precision when flying. This system is all weather and can even be flown in light rain. The lenses on board today are the Zenmuse Z30 zoom lens and the Zenmuse XT2 thermal imaging sensor.
