Innehållsförteckning för August - September 2021 från RotorDrone Pro

FLYING ON MARS The first aircraft to fly on Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity spacecraft is a drone in every sense of the word, and among its many achievements is a record distance for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations. But how does this small helicopter fly in the Martian atmosphere, and how is it being controlled from Earth? You’ll learn the answers to these questions and more in our “Mission to Mars” feature. Did you know that the drone services market is expected to grow to a $64.3 billion dollar industry by 2025? And according to the Federal Aviation Administration, 2.85 million small drones could fill the U.S. skies by as early as next year. It’s no surprise that a variety of fields are using small uncrewed aerial vehicles to…

Ahybrid design, Fixar combines the best elements of drones on the market: it provides the take-off and landing maneuverability of multirotor drones, and the increased payload and endurance of fixed-wing drones. Its plug-and-play payload module design allows for various use cases that range from mapping and surveying to last-mile delivery and stockpile management. The company recently tested its drone against 10 leading competitors in the same weight and wingspan category (7kg) and found that it outperformed them in multiple categories, including: Longer flight time (up to 60 minutes) Heavier payloads leading to increased sensor quality capacity (up to 2 kg/4.4 lb.) Increased stability in adverse weather conditions (-30 °C to +60 °C /-22 °F to 140 °F) Ability to take off and land vertically Can maintain positions (hover) Additional compared…

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 2.85 million small drones could fill the sky by 2022, and nearly a half million will be used for commercial purposes. The drone services market size is expected to grow to $63.6 billion by 2025! The drone industry continues to build momentum and shows no signs of slowing down. That all boils down to one thing: operators will be needed to fly or program all of those drones! Read on to learn more about the top applications for commercial drones. CONSTRUCTION According to “Construction Dive,” a website that offers insight into the news and trends shaping the construction and building industry, “Drones provide construction teams with an overhead view of jobsites, materials, machinery and people. Contractors are using the autonomous flying machines to…

In the June/July issue of RotorDrone Pro, I covered the various types of airspace with which remote pilots should be familiar and able to identify on aviation sectional charts. Knowledge thereof is essential to stay legal and safe while flying but also necessary to ensure passing the remote pilot exam. Yet airspace is only one part of sectional chart knowledge that remote pilots need to have in to legally, safely, and effectively operate their drones. While there is an almost endless supply of symbols, colors, and alphanumeric data on sectional charts, let’s take some time to explore some of the most common, useful, and impactful symbology that you may encounter. Because of its coverage in a previous article, I will forgo discussions about airspace types; however, it is prudent to…

Location: Wicklow, Ireland Pilot: Brian McNulty (@roiaerialvideos) Drone: DJI Mavic Air 2 w/ND Filters SEND US YOUR PHOTOS If you have an image that you’ve taken with a multirotor that you’d like to see show cased 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.…

Counting penguins is harder than it sounds. With freezing rain, snow, and chilling winds that limit the flight windows for the surveys, it takes scientists using three full days to map the location of 300,000 nesting pairs of Adélie penguins on Antarctica’s Cape Crozier. Now, UgCS software by SPH Engineering has helped scientists to cut that time to just 3 hours using drones and a new flight path algorithm. Previously, scientists piloted single drones back and forth over swaths of land. Now, a new flight-path algorithm called “Popcorn” automatically sets the course for multiple drones to pass over the same area in just a fraction of the time, while avoiding collisions and meeting strict airspace regulations. The new program, which cuts out the human pilot, was a more than 10-fold…

trange things start happening once a company no longer has any meaningful competition, and the Air 2S from DJI is a prime example. Like all of the company’s offerings over the past several years, it’s an absolutely top-quality platform that provides robust capabilities in both its flight and imaging performance. However, it also has some important limitations—a few of them seemingly arbitrary—which it is important to understand before you buy it simply because you can afford it and it is the “latest and greatest” from the world’s leading manufacturer in the industry. THE BASICS To begin with, let us consider the Air 2S as a small uncrewed aircraft system (sUAS)—a flying machine that we intend to operate in the National Airspace System (NAS). In this regard, our top concerns must…

Prior to landing on Mars, Ingenuity’s environmental tests were performed through modeling and computer simulations. Afterwards, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Space Simulator—an 80-foot tall, 25-feet in diameter vacuum chamber was used to mimic the atmosphere on Mars. To see if Ingenuity could survive in certain weather conditions, engineers created wind tunnels and performed tests at predicted Martian temperatures. Then to mimic Mars’ gravity—which is one-third that of Earth—NASA used a high-tech fishing reel mounted like a pulley to offload the difference. Yet, due to the tiny size of the Space Simulator, Ingenuity was not able to move more than 1.6 feet. This posed some unknowns; for instance, would the cameras and sensors be able to track the ground at higher speeds? Could dust interfere with camera performance? Will the algorithm…

Generally speaking, I always thought of selfies as being harmless fun. However, the idea of people becoming obsessed with the manufacturing of their own selfportraits came across as somewhat narcissistic. Because of that I always steered away from taking pictures of myself, and never in a million years would I have imagined writing a feature on taking selfies—yet alone this one. So if you’re wondering what inspired this article, it emerged from a moment I flicked through a web link featuring some of the world’s most powerful drone pictures. There were a couple of images exhibited there that lured me into exploring this avenue. A common theme among these images was that they were not just top-down aerial pictures taken with a drone; they managed to incorporate the photographer into…

With its partner Windracers Ltd., Royal Mail has become the first UK parcel carrier to deliver mail to a UK island in a 70-mile, beyond-line-of-sight, autonomous flight to the Scilly Isles. Tasked to better connect the islands’ remote communities, a consortium including Royal Mail, Windracers Ltd., DronePrep, University of Southampton, Excalibur Healthcare Services, and Consortiq Limited is funded by UK Research and Innovation. The large, twin-engine, UK-built UAV from Windracers can fly in poor weather conditions, including fog, potentially enabling Royal Mail to better serve remote island communities. It can carry roughly 220 pounds worth of mail, equivalent to a typical delivery round. A smaller Windracers Ltd. Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) drone will then fly parcels between the islands for delivery to recipients. It the trial is successful, Royal…

The success of Ingenuity, otherwise known as the “Mars helicopter,” has united the world in celebration of a unique event in the history of aviation: the first powered flight by an aircraft on another world. Even the staid International Civil Aeronautics Organization got in on the act, designating the bare patch of Martian soil where the historic series of flights took place with its own three-letter airport code: IGY. Elon Musk has yet to announce when regular passenger service might begin, but at least now you will know what code to look for on the departure board. It’s a heady moment in the history of flight, but for readers of RotorDrone Pro, there was something distinctly familiar about the entire episode. Strip away the exotic location and adaptations to fly…

Tucked away beneath Ingenuity’s solar panel is a small patch of fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer—the first heavier-than-air aircraft to fly in Earth’s atmosphere. It’s a moving tribute to those great pioneers of terrestrial aviation, Orville and Wilbur Wright, that both honors and expands up their legacy. However, the trip from Earth to Mars might have been the least complicated part of that fabric’s journey from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to Jezero Crater on the surface of the red planet. The original Wright Flyer is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. However, the fabric covering its wings and stabilizers was replaced in 1985 as part of a conservation project. Furthermore, the material removed as part of that effort was not, in fact,…

OF PUNTERS AND PONIES Incident Type: Unlawful Surveillance Incident Location: Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool, UK Aircraft Type: Not disclosed Incident Resolution: Pilot and crew arrested; drone seized In the 1973 classic “The Sting,” Paul Newman and Robert Redford purportedly develop a system to discover the winner of an out-of-town horse race in real time—before the results are announced publicly. This gives them the ability to always bet on the right horse and earn unlimited winnings. To finance their plans, they turn to a vicious gangster played by Robert Shaw. However, the whole scheme is, in fact, a con to separate Shaw from a substantial sum of his money, and the claim of knowing the winners in advance is an elaborate fraud. Earlier this year, a trio of men in the United…