Bramor

Intro:
As useful as quadcopters are sometimes you need to use a fixed wing UAV. Today my crew got to work with the Bramor UAV which is a top of the line UAV.

Study Area:

Purdue Wildlife Area was used for the location to gather data with the intent to map the ponds on 6/3/19. The weather was 72 degrees F and sunny. Wind variable. The Bramor was the platform used and was flown at 120 meters at the speed of 16 meters a second. No GCPs were used in this mission since the Bramor was using post processing kinetics (PPK). Furthermore, GCPs in fixed wing operations would take a considerable amount of time to lay out given that the area covered is far greater.

Methods:

Bramor

Before leaving for the field we went through a checklist that was very detailed. This allowed us to realize that our PPK was not charged all the way. This would have skewed our data to the point that is would be unusable. The Pilot was William Weldon and the flight was approximately 20 minutes. The rest of the crew was used as Visual Observers. We used a catapult launch to make sure that we had a successful launch.











Discussion:

The Bramor mission was very successful and uneventful. In the word of Dr. Hupy "My favorite flights are uneventful flights, because that meant that nothing went wrong!" A major factor of successful flight was the delegation of the checklist and the thoroughness of the communication. We used a walki-talki app so that the entire crew could communicate in real time in case anything was to go wrong. This is so critical because the Bramor is a completely autonomous UAV platform. Meaning once it takes off you can't control it unless you hit return to home/launch and deploy the parachute.

We had to mat down the grass on the edge of the catapult to ensure that no grass got in the way of the launch. We also had to make sure that the catapult was far enough away from any trees so the Bramor could climb above them without any chance of hitting them.

Bramor Orthomosaic

Conclusion:
Checklists and attention to detail can make or break not only a flight, but a crews reputation. Being very cautious every time is critical especially when you are dealing with a fully autonomous UAV platform.