(Week 12) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

-Colin Powell

Sometimes you have to start with the bad so that growth and improvement can be shown more clearly. It is true, the Maiden flight was a success. The Bramor made it into the sky, pictures were taken, and it was recovered intact and without damage. However, many things could happened that would have changed this from success to tragedy. So lets start with the Ugly.

The UGLY

Examine the following two videos very carefully. The first video is from the first launch of the Bramor at the Tippecanoe County Amphitheater and the second was the final launch for AT-419 at The Purdue Wildlife Area.

Launch Site Layout

Even with the different camera angles, it is obvious that the first launch almost ended before the flight began. It came dangerously close to the soccer goal on the right hand side of the video. Due to a slight tail wind and obstacles present during the climb-out, an incident was marginally missed. I attribute this to poor decisions for launch location and direction made by all involved. It could have easily been avoided by moving the launch location to the opposite side of the soccer field. Again, the crew displayed the hazardous attitude of resignation and the phrases, "it should be okay" and "the wind is a non-factor" came up multiple times during pre-flight. That mixed with inexperience with the system leads me to call this launch a "near-miss". We could have easily moved the launch site. We would have just had to carry the equipment to the north side of the soccer field. When compared to the second launch, the first was just ugly.

The Bad

The flight went smoothly and the target data was successfully collected. As this was the first time data was processed for this mission some issue arose. The data processor in the group, Evan H. had some issues with aligning the pictures to the ground to tie in the data points. For more information on the data collection that was conducted for the first flight, check out Evan H. blog post HERE. He is the primary Subject Matter Expert (SME) when it comes to processing data and has some good points about the issues for this data set.

On site, the collective group broke one of the only field rules issued by the instructor of the course; "No unnecessary talk during the checklist." We were all excited to get the flight up and get the data collected, but "chatting" and joking during the pre-flight checklist may have attributed to the bad decisions for the launch site selection and direction.

Additionally, being fixated on the issue of site selection lead to my overall lack of Situational Awareness (SA). This is a common human factor issue among pilots, forgetting to complete the primary flight duties by remembering to "Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate." I focused on the issue of tailwind and rotated the launcher to face more of a crosswind for the launch, in doing this the takeoff direction faced the soccer goals more than it had at the previous spot. With a tailwind and the soft launch, the Bramor had difficulty during the initial climb-out (which can be seen in the first video above). Turning the direction now introduced the obstacle, that could have been avoided if i would have remember reevaluate the environmental aspect of SA .

How hard is it to get the pilots to enter flight the information into Drone log book?! It is important to remember that as an organization, like the working group for this AT-419 class, the job is not done until its done. This was a problem for this group. It was like pulling teeth trying to get the flight meta data entered into the Drone Logbook (DLB) application.But for most of the class, the recovery process was not a major focus. Many left the field and forgot about the responsibilities of recovering the equipment. The lack of getting the flight information put into DLB showed me that I am not the only one who does not think that the DLB application properly meets our needs, and that a replacement should be sought out. The class created a "Meta Data" form to be used for recording the flight information can be seen in the slideshow below. This form was to make it easier to log the flight into DLB later when internet could be establish. However, this form was not used and lead to recording of flight data to be entered a long time after the flight was conducted. An alternative logging application, Measure, was introduced as an option. Hopefully the logging students will take this seriously as a viable option as to move away from the issue of Drone Logbook.

The Good

By noting that I have at least two launch videos, someone could extrapolate that the first flight resulted in a successful recovery that is able to be turned around and flown again. This was the case for the maiden flight of the Bramor at the TCA. The parachute, packed by Todd H. and I, deployed correctly and brought the UAV to the ground safely. I was confident that it would, but the first time comes with some "uncertainties". One uncertainties happened when i was recovering the aircraft and parachute. I was uncertain of a good way to handle the parachute, because of that the suspension lines become "fouled" or tangled up. This took Dr. Hupy and myself a good deal of time to untangle and return to a good condition to be repacked for another flight. Lucky for the team, there was a second parachute that could be used while the first one was being "recovered"

Dr. Hupy and My-self re-covering the Bramor and the Parachute

All in all this was a valuable learning experience. It resulted in a safe, completed flight, that produced enough dataa to create a 3D model of the Tippecanoe County Amphitheater. Some of the data collected can be seen in the collage below. The first image is map that was created by Evan H. of the TCA. The second shows a zoomed in picture for the seats at the actual amphitheater. the third, fifth, and sixth images are screen shots while using the Pix4D application. The fourth is the un-zoomed image of the seats at the amphitheater.