Day 15

We started the morning in the field today where we met with the guys from Williams Aerospace and the other hobbyist aviators. The Williams guys sell military grade UAVs and have their own equipment and operation, whereas the hobby guys interact with us much more. Iam is the guy with the X8 plane that flew the only successful flights we’ve had so far and this morning was another success. Iam deferred to me to create the flight plan for the X8 and so I got to use the Mission Planner software to design the flight plan for the morning. After a few iterations, I got a good flight plan created and we launched the X8 into the valley. It had two cameras aboard, both Ricohs, one for true color images and another for the near infrared. It was really awesome being able to work so closely with those guys. I really enjoyed being able to create the whole flight plan for the autopilot to fly and then being able to see it in action. I was ambitious with my plan and I directed the X8 to fly all the way to the back of the valley climbing to 1000 feet by the time it got to the back of the valley. Using the Mission Planner software I created takeoff and landing waypoints along with around 20 waypoints in between at varying altitudes. It was a really great experience learning how to account for the altitude of the valley floor and design a flight plan that kept the plane at a relatively constant elevation able the terrain so that we could get good imagery and also prevent the plane from crashing into the mountains and cliffs that surround the valley. Our first flight was cut short because we ran out of batter power in the plane. We were carrying two cameras and flying the entire length of the valley, so it makes sense. The first flight plan was 10 miles, so our next flight was a bit smaller at around 6.5 miles. I had to leave the field early because I was on dinner duty. We all signed up to cook on different days and my team’s day was today. So, I was pretty disappointed to leave the field without seeing my second flight, but I’m told it was a good flight.

First flight plan