(Week Seven)And on the 7th Week

If you lived in the Midwest, then you would understand that during the first 1/4 of the year, the weather outside provides "less than optimal" flying conditions. These conditions are particular hard when using small UAV. Strong, bitter winds mixed with below freezing temperatures are especially tough on lithium battery's. On top of all that, this year has produced a good deal of frozen precipitation that makes mapping or imaging the Tippecanoe county amphitheater impossible. The cold temperatures leave the precipitation on the ground for weeks at a time. During this non-flying time, in-lab work has been done on preparing for the flights to come. Brainstorming and research is being done with the main focus being to present ideas using a poster on key aspects for the safe and ethical operation of UAS on a commercial basis through training on topics such as situational awareness, crew resource management and operational integrity.

Screenshot of checklist loaded into drone logbook

The operational tempo this week has left room for a variety of platform research. Most of available time was dedicated to reading through the technical manuals for both the M600 and the Bramor.

Corrections were made to the checklist in the drone log book application that were made by other students in the capstone course. The problem in the checklist was that personal limits were incorporated into the doctrine that was just not accurate of what the manufacture of the systems publish as their capabilities. This type of condescending attitudes will ultimate lead to margin of safety that is unreasonable for efficient data collection. Safety is, and should always be, forefront in any operation. However, putting in personal limits into doctrine causes the operator that is following the checklist to further diminish the operational ability of the system when they incorporate their personal limits as to keep a safe buffer from the posted limits in the checklist. This spiral of restriction puts risk on the system and to the operation and will ultimately cost time and money down the road in any organization.

Graph representing the "spacing effect"

Repetition is a very effective way at learning and remembering skills and information. In many cases, it is the only effective learning method . German psychologist and quantitative memory researcher Hermann Ebbinghausm, developed the ideas that are used in this "spacing effect" graph. The idea is that with each repetition, the length of time that the target behavior is remembered increases towards 100 percent recallability. This is the basis behind the idea of why I must perform folding of the Bramor swept wing UAV continually as to remember how it is done as well as perform it with better efficiency and accuracy. This week is no different. Practice makes perfect as i learn the skill of folding parachutes with the intent of building a training video for others to use in the future. Keep checking back to find a link to the Bramor parachute folding video!

Bramor Parachute Practice