Night Vision Drone Experience, Anybody ?? Advice, Suggestions, Wigwamitis experience especially appreciated and sought.
- Thread starter j-huskey
- Start date
Yep, bad juju! One of my CFI instructors had a bird strike about a year before we got pair up. The little Robinson helis just have a thin (maybe 1/8" thick or so) Lexan windshield, and they don't really stop much besides wind, rain, and bugs. The bird hit about shin level right in the middle of the aircraft and came clear through, blood, guts, feathers, and all. Thanksfully the instrument cluster took the brunt of the impact. His student (a Chinese guy with pretty low hours) was quite shaken up, but the aircraft was flyable so they managed to set it down in the desert and radio for help. The lead mechanic flew out, inspected the aircraft, and flew it the 8 or so miles back to the airport, still with a huge chunk of windshield missing and bird guts everywhere, haha.
Funny in retrospect because nobody got hurt. A foot or two to either side and a foot or two up, and it may have been a different story...
A couple of universities have conducted studies with the airline manufactures on impact results. The drones are four times the density of a bird of equal weight. Cabin depressurization or cockpit strike would not go over well. Yup, please fly your sUAS carefully.
FMR! That's insane....or to me....a non pilot....that's insane. But I guess at 200 knots that fluffy little 4lb meat sack has some serious kinetic potential. Glad everyone was ok. What did it sound like when it happened?
It sounded like someone hit the plane with a baseball bat, hard...REALLY hard. I've hit a metric fuck ton of birds in the last 25 years, but that one did the most damage. As "luck" would have it tho, that's prolly the best place to take a hard hit like that. Any higher and wouldve come thru the windscreen, left or right, into the engines.
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Hi,
Just cut straight to the chase (Pun Intended) and bypass the consumer grade UAV and go to commercial grade such as below.
https://www.higheye.com/
4 hour flight time
50km range
If I recall my conversation with rep..they will lease the unit but you would have to check their requirements and such.
Sincerely,
Theis
Just cut straight to the chase (Pun Intended) and bypass the consumer grade UAV and go to commercial grade such as below.
https://www.higheye.com/
4 hour flight time
50km range
If I recall my conversation with rep..they will lease the unit but you would have to check their requirements and such.
Sincerely,
Theis
I’m a little late to this but anyways. Maybe pigs react different but the deer will run if I’m close enough to spot them on an HD feed, let alone a 640x512 signal. That can be with the quiet drone (Mavic) or the loud one (old hex frame). My guess is you would need a very narrow FOV thermal and fly at relatively high altitudes to avoid detection. It was a huge let down that first time when everything ran. I thought a couple hundred feet would get me in the clear. I’m surprised how scared the deer were of the air. Not a lot of natural threats that way.
Update:
The Inspire is working very well. There are indications a "mavic" might work better. One has appeared ups....
Pigs arent impressed by the big mosquito. Even at 100 feet. Keep munching.
Deer leave immediately if the drone is above them at any height on all our fields.
But, at one field, we can rattle the chain on the metal gate, a mile away and the deer look up in that direction. Drive a diesel truck within half a mile of that field and the deer leave. Drone near that field 3-500 yards, deer leave.
Older more mature coyotes act like deer. Young dogs dont scare as easy.
But, back to drone. It works fine for locating the critters. The inspire has about a 25 minute loiter time. We dont fly abrupt movements. Drone up, drone circles field, drone hovers over suspects, drone flies off, back to truck.
New battery, field two. Repeat. Repeat on field 3.
No critters ? Three fields in 45 minutes vs 4-5 hours riding on golf cart. 8-11 MILES on golf cart, that is painful.
So far, the drone has worked just fine for locating critters. That's all we have used it for at night, locating problem areas to visit.
Day, check wash areas, check crop damages, check pines for beetles, count the livestock, locate livestock that got out, time savings on the farm.
iPad attached to inspire makes it much easier to see, and record. So far so good.
And, no, there have been zero incidents of aircraft in the areas we fly, and no aircraft noted in the 3-400' agl the drone is working. We've seen both buzzards and eagles dodge lower flying aircraft and those were all well above 2500'.
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We have choppers low flying ... clipping the trees around our house ... but up at 300-400 feet with the drones we are up above them, so all is well so far. 
Started with Phantom 4. Great practice drone.
Inspire is heavier and more affected by wind, pushed more in wind direction when hovering, requiring a little more operator savvy.
Mavic slightly heavier, same type wind interference as inspire. Mavic and inspire use the same thermal camera.
Loiter time on the batteries is reduced by wind, active maneuver, vs sedate maneuver, dropped to 20 minutes on inspire.
Showed the inspire to a new guy last night and the difference in knowing what you are seeing, deer, coyote, pig, is enhanced by experience and ability to identify on thermal, versus new person seeing, and unable to ID, will determine "some" of airtime effectiveness in covering larger areas.
Learn some more every time it flies.
Inspire is heavier and more affected by wind, pushed more in wind direction when hovering, requiring a little more operator savvy.
Mavic slightly heavier, same type wind interference as inspire. Mavic and inspire use the same thermal camera.
Loiter time on the batteries is reduced by wind, active maneuver, vs sedate maneuver, dropped to 20 minutes on inspire.
Showed the inspire to a new guy last night and the difference in knowing what you are seeing, deer, coyote, pig, is enhanced by experience and ability to identify on thermal, versus new person seeing, and unable to ID, will determine "some" of airtime effectiveness in covering larger areas.
Learn some more every time it flies.
