This magazine isn't online, but you can get it on your iPad, Kindle or Android tablet via NextIssue. The article is a pretty basic overview, with examples of using a Rite Wing Zephyr and a hexacopter along with a Canon s100 modified with the IR filter removed. But it's notable that drones are getting this kind of attention in agriculture.
Comments
Gary, interesting examples, but both examples were military where they are intentionally flying in the same air space, and using much heavier planes than most farmers would even consider using. We are flying a 5 lb foam rubber plane and under 400 feet in very low traffic air space. In all of our COA areas we have never seen another aircraft.
Oh the Luna incident which cropped up again all over the place last week as new
But that was old hat not sure why it came up again.
Well, let's use other countries where the citizens have much more freedom to fly sUAS and let's look at their mid-air collision records between manned aircraft and sUAS. Other countries are many years ahead of the US because they do not face the same types of restrictions we have here and I am not hearing about mid-air collisions in these countries either. Have you heard of any? Is this more bogey man mentality than reality? I am not saying there will not eventually be some accidents, but there are accidents all the time between current aircraft and they have not grounded all of them.
Well we were blessed with the exclusive pictures (until every other news site in the world ripped us off) of theC 130 - RQ 7 incident not quite small I know at sUAS News and then there was the Desert Hawk airprox
That said most of Europe has sensible rules that would allow Joe Farmer to operate legally. Its the military industrial complex leaning on the FAA over there that's your hold up. At a recent conference Gene from sUAS News was shocked to hear one current bead of thinking at the FAA. You are going to have to listen to it here. In 2015 all the FAA has to say is its a matter of safety and congress can do nowt.
The FAA needs to met with risk mitigation's in place, safety management systems and pilot training resolved.
I am still waiting to see where the small unmanned aircraft have been involved in a mid air collision. I would then ask if there were a few cases, why pick on the sUAS. If a collision or two is justification for grounding sUAS, then we need to ground all the aircraft, and if trying to avoid ever having an accident were justification, then let's all get off the road and stop driving cars. If we were really this serious about saving lives, we would shut down the Internet so bad people could not ue it to stock others, we would get rid of alcohol so no drunk driving accidents could happen. Is this really more about control than safety?
Adrian, thanks for sharing the link to URSULA. We will have to do a bit of catch-up here in the US when the FAA finally allows UAS commercial applications in 2015 (or so we've been promised). I expect that your example is going to be invaluable to us. In the mean time, we are pushing ahead as far as possible under the restrictions.
Good point Monroe, that is why we do not fly beyond visual range, and we do not fly over people. A small UAV that does not cost an arm and a leg has the added "safety feature" that you can crash it in a crop field if there is an approaching manned aircraft and not enough time to land. No-one will get hurt. Not so simple when there is a person in the aircraft.
Funny how you can fly a ultralight without a license and at 500 feet but you can't fly a 3lbs quad copter at < 400 ft.
US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations have really slowed program in this area in the US. It is nearly impossible for a company to form that wishes to use sUAS technology because FAA will shut them down. We are praying for a more progressive attitude by the FAA in the future. There are 1000s of hobbyist flying these types of aircraft every day in the US and no one that I have talked to has ever heard of a mid air collision between a manned aircraft and a remotely controlled aircraft.
This is already happening in the UK.
We operate a commercial UAS based agricultural data service which was launched earlier this year following several years of research:
URSULA Agriculture
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