Innehållsförteckning för October - November 2020 från RotorDrone Pro

DARK OPS Safely operating a drone in a low light environment adds unique hazards to your flight operations, and in the United States, commercial drone pilots must apply for an FAA waiver to legally fly at night. In this month’s special 14-page feature, “Night Flights,” contributor Patrick Sherman details the specialized training you and your visual observer will need to fly at night as well as how to successfully apply for an FAA night-flying waiver. Patrick also shares insights about how the human eye adjusts to see better in the dark (did you know that looking to the side of an object helps you to see it more clearly in low-light conditions?). And aspiring night-time photographers will appreciate his advice for shooting spectacular aerial images. We hope this guide to…

Insure your investment with a lightweight, autonomous parachute! Designed for drones such as the DJI M210 and others, this system is easy to attach and detach and uses an LED and acoustic status signal before takeoff and before it ejects. The parachute safety solution works autonomously and independently from the drone and ejects the parachute in a fraction of a second, enabling safe commercial and private drone usage even over crowed places. Drone Rescue Systems does not use a spring or pyrotechnics as a release system; sturdy elastic catapults the parachute out of a carbon tube. After release, it takes just a few minutes to repack the system and get your UAV ready to fly again. For more information, visit dronerescue.com.…

Engineered and designed to allow you to work and play in the toughest conditions. Low-noise fans keep your iPad cool while the spring-loaded latch keeps it secure. X-Naut’s Cooling Cases fit mini and up to 11-inch iPads. Also available are a monitor hood that eliminates glare and a rugged metal drone bracket that’s compatible with DJI Mobile Device Holders for Phantom and Inspire controllers. X-naut Pilot Series Cooling Cases start at $219.99. For more information, visit x-naut.com.…

Equipping your drone with a thermal-imaging camera is exactly the same as mounting an ordinary visible-light camera, with one crucial difference: the wavelengths of the photons its sensor detects. Apart from that, everything else works exactly the same, even though you are seeing the world in a whole new way. To understand the pictures produced by a thermal-imaging camera, let’s first take a moment to understand how we perceive visible light, either with a conventional electro-optical (EO) camera—military-industrial-complex jargon for a video or digital still camera—or even our own eyes. We see the world around us when our retina absorbs photons either emitted or reflected by an object in the environment. Objects that emit visible light include the sun, lightbulbs, and computer screens, and objects that reflect light include every…

Believe me when I tell you that color correction is not as difficult as you might think. In the August/September issue, we started our discussion on color correction and covered how to shoot flat and the basics of Log, or logarithmic setting. There are many tools/programs to use for color correcting video, and some you might already own. While these tools might seem intimidating when you start, you’ll see how intuitive these applications can be when you understand how to navigate the basics. TOOLS OF THE TRADE Most editing software have a basic color toolset, but there are some color-specific applications that you should learn. Blackmagic Design makes one of the most widely used applications in the industry: DaVinci Resolve. A version of it is also free. Resolve has been…

The Quaternium HYBRiX 2.0 UAV has a hybrid electric and two-stroke gas power system, allowing it to spray for more than an hour carrying 10 liters of liquid. HYBRiX is mainly flown 2 to 10 meters above the crop, with its four rotors creating a turbulence that helps to uniformly distribute. The drone’s four nozzles can spray up to 4 meters and are positioned to provide excellent coverage while reaching hidden layers of the crop. The application rate is adaptable to the type of crop. The airframe resists rain and dust, and incorporates a high-precision positioning system to increase effectiveness. For more details, visit quaternium.com.…

The new SRMHETRWP-15C touch screen outdoor monitor is 5 to 6 times brighter than the average LDC monitor or TV, allowing users to see clear, sharp video images even with bright sunlight on the face of the screen. Its resistive touch screen will not false trigger due to rain or snow and can be activated with exposed fingers or with any type of gloves. Its NEMA 4X waterproof front face ensures it will stand up to the elements, or industrial wash-downs, and it will operate in temperatures from-22°F to +185°F. Details at tru-vumonitors.com.…

Flylogix and Cambridge Consultants, part of the Capgemini Group, have announced a collaboration that will exploit Iridium’s state-of-the-art satellite communications to safely control unmanned aerial vehicles from a central control hub. This will enable Flylogix to move from local drone piloting at the airfield to centrally controlled operations, massively increasing the resilience of their services to offshore installations. The Flylogix service reduces the cost, risk and environmental impact of gathering data from offshore exploration and production activities. Remote monitoring using satellite-controlled drones is a critical development for offshore operations, while applications that extend beyond line of sight are the next frontier in drone service development. Oil and gas operators need accurate and timely operational data. Flylogix delivers full-service, over-horizon operations, without the cost and environmental impact of manned aviation. This…

As a professional drone pilot, conquering the hours of darkness means acquiring new knowledge, thinking seriously about safety and clearing bureaucratic hurdles—but it opens up a whole new world that only a few have begun to explore. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there are 180,000 certified commercial drone operators in the United States, and waivers have been issued to 4,400 of them allowing for night time flights. Simple arithmetic reveals that this elite group constitutes 2.5 percent of the total population of drone pilots. If you’re not one of them, then each aircraft you own is really only half a drone, because you can only fly it for half of the year—the half when the sun is above the horizon. Applying to the FAA for a certificate of…

FLIR is the world’s largest commercial manufacturer of thermal imaging cameras—so large that it exceeds the volume of cameras sold by all of its competitors combined. With nearly 3,000 employees worldwide and annual sales exceeding $1.6 billion, the company is headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Established in 1978, FLIR’s initial goal was to conduct home energy audits to improve efficiency in the wake of the OPEC oil embargo. That mission quickly expanded to include the development of low-cost thermal imaging systems for airborne applications. A decade later, the company had begun to leverage its expertise to enter new markets, including portable and laboratory systems. Today, FLIR serves the consumer market with products like the FLIR ONE, which transforms an Android or iOS phone into a thermal-imaging camera. It also provides systems…

Location: Detroit Lake, Oregon Pilot: Patrick Sherman, Roswell Flight Test Crew Drone: DJI Phantom 4 Pro+ SEND US YOUR PHOTOS If you have an image that you’ve taken with a multirotor that you’d like to see showcased in “Over the Horizon,” please send your high-resolution image, your Instagram handle (if applicable), and information on the location and the drone you flew to capture the image to RotorDrone@AirAge.com. Every photographer we feature on this page will receive a free one-year subscription or extension to RotorDronePro magazine.…

With an industry-first 32x zoom, 4K HDR video, and FLIR thermal imaging capabilities, the Anafi USA is an ultraportable, secure, and durable aerial camera platform that’s built to meet the demands of first responders, firefighters, search-and-rescue teams, security agencies, and survey and inspection professionals. Its 32x zoom is designed around two 21-megapixel cameras, allowing operators to see details clearly from up to 5 km (3.1 miles) away. The zoom image is coupled (blended) with images from Anafi USA’s FLIR camera, allowing operators to detect hot spots as well as people and other important details. Fully operational in less than a minute, Anafi USA can be launched from the palm of your hand and will fly indoors without GPS. It costs $7,000. For more details, visit parrot.com.…

Emesent’s Hovermap LiDAR scanner is being used to supercharge the Matrice 300 RTK (M300) next generation industrial drone. Emesent’s engineering team took advantage of the head start to determine how best to mount Hovermap on the M300 and integrate its autonomous functionality with the operating system used to drive the drone. Pairing Hovermap with the M300 enables users to safely fly the drone into locations where GPS data is not available, including underground mine sites, densely packed warehouses, and under bridges. The technology can also be used to create a current 3D representation of a structure or piece of infrastructure that may have been modified or extended over time. Emesent CEO Dr. Stefan Hrabar said, “Hovermap allows M300 users to extend the capabilities of the drone significantly. That’s appealing to…

Skyqraft, a data-driven infrastructure inspection company from Sweden, was granted BVLOS operation permission for the Vertical Technologies DeltaQuad VTOL UAV to inspect a large portion of the Swedish power grid. Fully autonomous from takeoff to landing and using long-range radio transmission combined with LTE based video and control links, Skyqraft was able to perform multiple BVLOS missions gathering high-resolution images for over 1,000 km of powerlines. The resulting data is used for early indicators of failures to the powerlines, isolators, and towers. The missions are planned to follow the powerlines at a safe altitude using automatic terrain following. The onboard camera is automatically triggered to record high-resolution photographs of the selected path while the operator receives live video and keeps a control link over long distances. Using ADS-B transponder receivers,…

Once you receive your daylight waiver from the FAA, no doubt you will be anxious to exercise your hard-won privilege. Nighttime aerial photography is a great way to begin your exploration into darkness while capturing some dramatic images that you can add to your portfolio. From a photographer’s perspective, the key difference between day and night is the absence of light. At the surface, this seems like an observation so obvious as to not be worthy of mention. However, it has critical implications for the art of photography, which must be considered before you can begin capturing quality night-time images. Visible-light cameras possess a sensor that captures the light reflected and emitted from objects in the environment to create an image, in a manner not dissimilar to the retina in…

Remote Identification (RI), Universal Traffic Management (UTM), and drones connected to wireless networks are top of mind in the drone industry right now. To get the inside story on these topics, I sat down with Skyward President Mariah Scott and Skyward Co-Founder & Director of Aviation Network Technology Eric Ringer for an Executive Roundtable webinar on regulations, technology, and the innovation shaping the drone industry. Here are their answers to 10 of the most frequently asked questions we received, all about Remote ID and UTM. 1. WILL I NEED NEW EQUIPMENT TO COMPLY WITH REMOTE ID? No, in most cases. Under the proposed Remote ID rule, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requiring drones to “broadcast” Remote ID directly to its surroundings (through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, for example) and to…

Taking photos from dizzying heights doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be interesting or effective. Once you’ve located yourself on a high altitude with a drone, aimlessly shooting will not guarantee you any visually pleasing results. In fact, the most common problem I’ve observed with amateur photographers is that, once they’ve made their drone airborne, they often get stuck and think to themselves: Where do I start, and what should I shoot that’s going to be interesting? The moment you start to explore aerial photography, a shift in mindset and a structured way of thinking can dramatically boost your confidence and inspire you to create more powerful images. Shooting into the horizon or from a top-down perspective doesn’t necessarily guarantee you quality results. Theoretically, although you are “up in the sky”…