Took delivery on 2 Solos 6-5

Posted by George Finlay on June 7, 2015 at 5:33pm

They already have American registration numbers, N665NZ and N666NZ. First test flights at our practice field went well 6-6 in 15 knot wind gusting 25.

Plan is to test them for survey, inspection and search work under our commercial FAA Section 333 exemption #11633.

Will post progress reports here. Feel free to ask any and all questions about how they are standing up to our thorough tests.

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Replies

  • Gregg June 10, 2015 at 4:53pm

    What kind of flight times?

    • George Finlay > Gregg June 11, 2015 at 5:27am

      In further flight testing yesterday, we achieved 15 minutes duration in maneuvering flight, landing shortly after receiving the low battery warning at 25% power remaining. Conditions: calm wind, air temp 26 dC, battery temp immediately after flight 55 dC.

      One discrepancy we saw repeatedly: after one pre-programmed "orbit" flight pattern, the Solo app quit on our iPad. Control of the aircraft remained. We will report this to 3DR.
    • Gregg > George Finlay June 11, 2015 at 9:22am

      Im sure at Denvers altitude I can reduce those flight times by 8%.

  • AKRCGUY June 8, 2015 at 4:20pm

    In case anyone is interested, we shot a video on the COA and exemption process-

    YouTube
  • RPM June 8, 2015 at 1:08pm

    Flight times during test flights?

    • George Finlay > RPM June 8, 2015 at 1:11pm

      We only did basic functionality testing on our first test flight day 6/6. Next time out to the test field we will log flight durations and conditions. Weather permitting, that will be within a day or two.

  • This reply was deleted.
    • George Finlay June 8, 2015 at 12:57pm

      Martin,

      Like you, we plan initial test survey flights with a stock GoPro lens, looking at replacements available from 3rd parties like IRpro , and looking for a mapping and modeling service running Pix4D or similar software. We really do not want to do the processing inhouse. We'd rather be flying.

      http://www.ir-pro.com/

      https://pix4d.com/

  • This reply was deleted.
    • George Finlay June 7, 2015 at 8:56pm

      We and our partners at Next Generation Aviation (exemption #11311) are focusing first on the low-altitude still and video photo markets -- commercials, TV, film, real estate sales. For that, the DJI platforms are adequate. Meanwhile we are exploring opportunities where a higher degree of autonomous flight is crucial. There the open platform Pixhawk appears to hold the advantage.

      If the Solo proves useful, we will need to amend our exemptions to include it. And that is one of our beefs with the FAA: after we proved to them we can operate one small UAV safely, we think it is reasonable to ask that our approval be expanded to include all small UAVs, without another long expensive petition process.

      We understand the FAA has put on a second shift to handle the flood of exemption petitions. The shorter wait we had compared to NGA's wait on their petition filed in Dec 2014 may be a result.

    • 3D Robotics
      Chris Anderson > George Finlay June 7, 2015 at 8:59pm

      Sounds good. For autonomous mission planning, Solo works great with the Tower app on Android or Mission Planner (Win) or APM Planner (Mac, Linux)

    • Waladi > Chris Anderson June 8, 2015 at 3:16am

      Hi Chris,

      By using Solo with Tower app, will it void the warranty?

      Don't quite remember where I read this statement.

This reply was deleted.