Experience With UAS

  Sep 29, 2020 Week 5 Field Report Group 2: Jesse Giampaolo, Nick Dayton, Cole Bramel AT 409 UAS Capstone Course 9/22/2020   Martell Forest missions status:   This week and next, flight groups will be working to get cleared to fly the M600. The leaves are expected to start changing next week and it is essential to start collecting data beginning this week. Next week we should be cleared to fly. Cole is not in attendance today due to potential exposure to covid. All notes and this report was shared with him.   PWA Search and Rescue Simulation:   In an effort to get more mock search and rescue missions logged, William Weldon supervised two groups (myself included) through a number of iterations today. William hid the “body” which consisted of a red shirt and jeans. One group conducted the flight while the other analyzed the images. After the UAV was grounded, the flight crew packed it up and then became the ground search crew. The image analy...

  Sep 22, 2020   Week 4 Field Report Jesse Giampaolo, Cole Bramel, Nick Dayton AT 409 UAS Capstone Course 9/15/2020   Martell Forest mission:   The flights today were once again completed over Martell Forest. I was PIC for the first flight of the day and this was my group’s first chance to conduct a full mission with the M600. We used the PPK as opposed to the GCPs used last week. These work with Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) to provide more accurate GPS data than the GCPs could provide. These stations are owned and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and are available for free public use making this technology extremely helpful for the type of data the collection we are conducting.   The cloud coverage today was partly cloudy and the sun was to the east, low on the horizon. Noting the location of the sun can be very helpful when going back and looking at the ...

  Sep 14, 2020 Memorandum   To: Dr. Joseph Hupy From: Cole Bramel  Date: September 8th, 2020  Subject: Week One Field Notes For this week’s lab, my group was unable to perform a dry run of the setup, flight, and takedown of the drone. The positive was that my group got to watch all other flight groups perform a simple mission and go through the breakdown and setup of the drone. This lets our team observe multiple times what to do right and what those teams did wrong while following along in the checklist. we witnessed teams try and switch steps around and Hupy explaining why the steps were in the order that they were. The teams then asked if it was okay to optimize the checklist for our crew's workflows. There was encouragement for each crew to find what order works for them as long as all the steps remain intact. There were also ideas of adding more steps into the checklist because there were some things that the students needed to ch...

  Sep 7, 2020 Memorandum   To: Dr. Joseph Hupy From: Cole Bramel  Date:  September 1st , 2020  Subject: Week One Field Notes On September 1 st , our the class was able to witness the operations of the Bramor fixed wing as well as the setup for a search and rescue. During this operation, we witnessed the crew go through a preflight checklist as well as the setup, launch, flight, and recovery of the aircraft. We also discussed some important details to keep in mind while the drone is in flight and what to do in an emergency. We then got to watch the M600 run a short mission. We learned that the camera on the Bramor was a Sony Rx1 with a 35mm lens. The settings for the camera were, a F-stop of 4.5, an ISO of 100, and a shutter of 1/1600. When the planned mission was over, the team showed us what the recovery was like. The aircraft returned to the field in front of the team and began to loiter until it was at a low enough altitude that the...