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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Hi Martin,
At Agribotix we have been getting excellent feedback on the quality and speed of our image processing. Check us out at www.agribotix.com. You can sign up as a user, upload your data, and see a thumbnail of the results, all for free. We also have a first field program where you can even download the kmz and/or geotiff just to see how we work.
Let me know if you have questions or if I can help.
Cheers,
Jason
Similar positions. Pixhawks on TBS Disco Pros
"We really do not want to do the processing inhouse. We'd rather be flying."
Or doing repairs...
Currently, Drone Deploy is at the top of our list:
https://www.dronedeploy.com/#RecommededDrones
BTW, congratulations on the SOLOs.
I did a quick search on N number registration. Thought I post a link in case anyone else is interested. I guess I better get this process started. Luckily the registration is only $5.
http://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certification/air...
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.
Thanks for the background. Glad to hear about the 2nd shift! I submitted in mid-May so hoping for 2.5 month turn around.
Sounds good. For autonomous mission planning, Solo works great with the Tower app on Android or Mission Planner (Win) or APM Planner (Mac, Linux)
Hi Chris,
By using Solo with Tower app, will it void the warranty?
Don't quite remember where I read this statement.
It only doesn't cover the "crash and we'll replace" warranty, which doesn't cover Auto mode. All the other regular warranties will continue to apply.
I have seen this posted as unsubstantiated comments also. I am not reading anything in the warranty that would imply such an exclusion. http://3drobotics.com/warranty/ So I would fly with Tower or MP without worry about this.
Looking forward to the progress reports. Really curious about camera/attachment you plan to use for survey?
Just curious on exemption 11633. It's for a DJI S1000. Do you plan to file an update or new exemption to cover the SOLO? I only ask as a point of learning about the process.
I submitted an exemption request also covering SOLO. I was trying to figure out whether the approval process has become faster now that it's more routine. Your exemption seem to have been approved in 2 1/2 months (Mar 4 - May 20). It seemed like previous ones were really taking 4 months. Thoughts?
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