DAY 4 – FINALISING FLYING AND CHOOSING FLYING SITES

We headed out in the early morning to fly on the airfield again to test out the IR camera again but his time with the proper filter to block out the red band to make room for the NIR band. The Hawks took significant interest in the UX5 and at one point came close to mobbing it which was quite unnerving but thankfully it landed without incident. We then decided to make a second flight but there were some complications with take off; a bolt got stuck on the launcher so the launch ramp malfunctioned but the UX5 was powerful enough to still to take off with just a slight dip in the normal takeoff path which was lucky. Each flight could be the last so we don’t want to over use it here as if it breaks we wont be able to collect any actual field data which more than being very disappointing would mean that the entire area would have to instead be surveyed with DGPSs (which would take far longer!).

After lunch we went to the police station to ask for permission to fly the UAV. The laws in India, regarding drones, are not as clear cut as in europe or the US so there is a grey area about flying UAVs even though it is technically legal. The upshot was that we needed to go to anther larger station which has more authority so that is a trip for tomorrow. IITK, part through its prestige and also through the staff that work there, holds a great amount of influence in the local area and beyond so (fingers crossed) hopefully it will be easy enough to clear it with the police.

When we got back me and Dipro went to the workshop (more like an industrial factory it has every piece of kit under the sun) to get launch ramp fixed and i was impressed how they did it there and then very easily. So now after all of these tests we are ready to fly it the field now which will happen next week which I’m looking forward to.