Sep 7, 2020

Memorandum 

To: Dr. Joseph Hupy

From: Cole Bramel 

Date: September 1st, 2020 

Subject: Week One Field Notes

On September 1st, 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 parachute could be deployed. When the aircraft finally touched down the team went out into the field and recovered it. The class went out to the landing area and we learned the best ways to recover the parachute and got a helpful analogy about ducks. They then disassembled and packed the aircraft in its case.

For the search and rescue operation we all split up into different groups. The groups consisted of two search teams, a manual team, a recovery team, a tech leader, and the flight team. Each team had a specific task, but I was assigned to the manual team. Our job was to search each picture manually and look for things that could be a body. Unfortunately, it took a long time to transfer the data from the SD card to the laptops so we weren’t able to start searching before lab ended.