Week 12: Wrapping up the Martell mission

 Field Report

Week 12: 11/9/20-11/16/20

Group 2: Jesse Giampaolo, Nick Dayton, Cole Bramel

Week 12 Overview 

This week, everyone in AT 409 who was not in quarantine met at Martell Forest on Tuesday (11/10) morning at 0930. Two missions were planned simultaneously. One was the standard NW and NE data collection with the M600 platform. That mission was conducted at 500ft AGL by crew 4. They began their first flight at 1015. Kaleb (student), John (student), and William (graduate teaching assistant) were going to conduct a flight to test the functionality of the recently repaired parachute door on the Bramor. This flight was to occur at or below 450ft AGL, but the winds were unflyable byt the time the crew set up the aircraft. The winds were erratic on the ground, and the METAR reported gusts up to 21kts. The crew conducting the M600 mission were not encountering significant resistance from the winds, and therefore proceeded with slightly shortened flights.

 

The last flight of the data collection period was conducted by crew 3 on Friday (11/13). Crew 2 initially intended to fly on the weekend of 11/14-15, but that flight never panned out. Saturday 11/14 was the start of deer firearm season in Indiana. We were informed to be careful on and around the property, and that early mornings and evenings are the more popular times for hunters to be out. Taking this into account, Saturday did not work schedule-wise and Sunday was too windy for a mission. 

Plans Moving Forward

Moving forward into weeks 13, 14, and 15 of the semester, all students in AT 409 will be working remotely to finish out the semester due to COVID cases increasing, and there is no need to continue flights in the field. Students will now be expected to coordinate and create a full field report containing notes and information from every flight conducted. Students will also be expected to finish their online portfolios, with information and data, as well as field reports from all the flights and labs completed this semester.

Week 11: Martell mission - a successful outing

 Field Report

Week 11: 11/2/20-11/9/20

Group 2: Jesse Giampaolo, Nick Dayton, Cole Bramel

Week 11 Overview 

This week, the class met with Measure Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Jesse Stepler for a discussion about the measure platform. The meeting occurred over Zoom, and was recorded. After the meeting the class met in COMP 101 at the Purdue University Airport for a demonstration on replacing a broken servo in the C-Astral drone, the Bramor. According to the scheduled flights on the Outlook Calendar, there were four flights occurring this week. Professor Hupy flew on Tuesday 11/3, crew four flew on Wednesday 11/4, crew three flew on Friday 11/6, and crew two flew on Sunday 11/8. The SOP for PPK corrections was adjusted to now use the WGS84 Geoid to prevent future processing errors in Pix4D and a new workflow was released. Cole will be processing the data for crew two’s Sunday flight shortly using this new workflow.

Week 11 Planned Flight: 11/7/2020

While crew two usually flies on Thursdays, Jesse was unable to attend at this date due to being absent from the state of Indiana for two days. Cole Bramel was following quarantine protocols, and was also unable to make Thursday, so the group pushed the flight back to Saturday 11/7. This flight was then pushed back to Sunday 11/8 after Nick was unable to operate in the field after an allergy related sickness. Jesse and Nick were to be the PIC and FO in the field, while Cole was to remote login to a laboratory computer and process the data, as well as organize and catalog it.

 Week 11 Conducted Flight: 11/8/2020

The morning of the flight, Jesse confirmed with the crew that the weather was flyable. The TAF reported low expected winds, high visibility and no significant weather events during the scheduled time of the flight (Figure 11.1). Jesse and Nick arrived at COMP 101 shortly after 1000, and waited for Kaleb (UTA & student) and William Weldon (GTA) to unlock the building and give us the keys to the truck. Jesse confirmed again that the METAR showed flyable weather before heading to the field (Figure 11.2). 

Figure 11.1: METAR and TAF as of 0835 ET 11/8/20

Figure 11.2: METAR as of 1035 ET 11/8/20

Jesse and Nick arrived at Martell at 1106 EDT, and began to set up the M600. The trees over both plots showed a significant decrease in foliage since the last time crew two was at Martell to fly. The Northwest plot looked particularly bare and discarded leaves littered the forest floor (Figure 11.3). For the first flight over the Northwest plot, the orange batteries were used, with new settings for Measure being 85% side overlap, and 75% front overlap. The shutter was at 1/2500, and there were some wind gusts coming from the south unreported on the KLAF METAR. Takeoff for the first flight occurred at 1131 EDT and landed at 1155 EDT for 24 minutes of flight time. The batteries had started flight with 96% power reported, ended at 13% power, and were draining rather quickly inflight. 

Figure 11.3: The Northwest plot’s foliage has decreased significantly

The Northeast plot was similarly bare, but since the grounds are more regularly maintained there were fewer leaves on the forest floor (Figure 4). For the second flight over the Northeast plot, the green batteries were used, with a shutter speed of 1/2500, 80% front overlap, and 80% side overlap. Takeoff was at 1202 EDT and the M600 landed at 1225 EDT. The batteries were at 95% on takeoff, and finished with 16%. There were a few planes flying well above our activities a few thousand feet away. Jesse noticed how the Measure app was lagging behind in reporting the M600’s location along the flight plan, as well as dots representing images taken were missing on the app as well (Figure 11.5). The latter is common and not cause for concern. However, due to a lack of confidence in Measure to accurately report battery percentage, Jesse and Nick took manual control and landed the drone before the final pass over the Northeast plot. A second flight was not performed over the Northeast plot because the remaining battery set was not one of the new ones and would not have handled an entire flight over the plot and the last few passes overlap with the Northwest plot anyway.

Figure 11.4: The Northeast plot’s foliage has also decreased significantly

Figure 11.5: The Northeast plot’s foliage has also decreased significantly

 

After completing the flights, Jesse and Nick returned to COMP 101 and returned the equipment and the truck. After a preliminary look over the data, everything appeared normal (Figure 11.6). Jesse and Nick offloaded every bit of data into the shared folder for Cole to remotely process. This time to avoid any issues with possibly deleting trigger files, no folders or files were deleted. Due to the flight being late in the week and a busy Monday schedule, processing has not yet been completed yet but will be done on Tuesday

Figure 11.6: Image taken on the α6000 above the launch site

Week 10: Martel mission continues, slight adjustments moving forward

 Field Report

Week 10: 10/26/20-11/2/20

Group 2: Jesse Giampaolo, Nick Dayton, Cole Bramel

Week 10 Overview 

Two flights were conducted in week 10, with varying levels of success. The first flight of the week occurred on Tuesday 10/27 with group two, Kaleb Gould, and Dr. Hupy. After the flight on Tuesday 10/27, Dr. Hupy informed the class through Microsoft Teams that going forward the shutter speed on the Sony A600 should be either 1/3200 or 1/2500 to avoid overexposure. The second flight was performed on Wednesday 10/28 with crew four and Dr. Hupy also present. After the flight, Dr. Hupy informed the class through Microsoft Teams that there would be some slight adjustments to data collection settings: all flights must now use a shutter speed of 1/2500, 85% lateral overlap for the Northwest Martell plot, and 80% lateral overlap for the Northeast Martell plot. Crew three planned to fly on Monday 10/26, but had to cancel due to illness. 

Week 10 Planned Flight: 10/22/2020

Prior to the flight, in the lab, it was decided to try out two new sets of batteries while flying and compare their depletion percentages to older battery sets. The battery sets brought to the field were the orange, green, and beige batteries. Group two was missing Cole Bramel this week due to COVID-19 quarantine restrictions, so Jesse and Nick drove out with Dr. Hupy to the field. At the gate, they unexpectedly met Kaleb Gould (another AT 409 student), who was there to conduct another mission that had gotten canceled due to weather restrictions.

The first flight took off at 1015 EDT using the green batteries over the Northwest plot. Upon landing, it was discovered that the Sony A600 wasn’t connected to the ppk, and no pictures were taken during the flight. This created a faulty trigger log in the SD card for the first flight. After changing out batteries, the second flight took off with the orange batteries over the Northeast Plot.

Figure 10.2: METAR for KLAF as of 1054 EDT 10/22/2020

 Failure to Process

This week we ran into a few errors both in the field and during processing.

Since Cole was in quarantine this week, he did all the processing remotely. It was found out that one of the PPKs trigger logs had accidentally been deleted during transfer. It was found that the other log, when compared to the amount of pictures that were taken, had several disparities. The amount of photos were different, none of the times lined up, and the triggers did not follow the usual pattern of a normal flight. Cole discussed possible solutions with Zach Miller and they came to the conclusion that sorting the data would be difficult and that without the data from the other plot it wouldn't be of much use.

 

The issues with the misaligned PPK data stems from issues encountered in the field. The PPK had a red light come on once. Another time we forgot to plug the PPK in all together and had to refly the NE plot. This caused confusion with the PPK logs when offloading data. In the future we will keep all logs no matter how certain we are until the data has been processed.