moca & rth settings

pepper

Well-Known Member
our firmware update policy is that the head of the drone team reviews the firmware update, looks for issues being reported and then tells everyone with that model to update their firmware. it has to be done before your next mission. we haven't had the go ahead for the latest m3 firmware update yet, but it's really weird that it fell out of the sky like that. the only other drone that's ever done that for us was the matrice.

we usually stick to the enterprise drones (or mavic 3t rather than the mavic 3e) that we tend to use come out well after the consumer model does. so firmware updates aren't as crazy. we jumped on the mavic 3 because rc pro controller cut down on the need for 2 ipads, and cause it was getting hard to get batteries and parts for some of our earliest drones. my work drone is a mavic 2e, i use the thermal camera a lot.

the survey guys might use the waypoints feature for the m3, but i don't think we will in operations. out of everyone in my state, probably fire will use it the most, they use a 3d modelling software that maps out their fire scenes. it involves flying a grid pattern over the scene. the software we use for crash investigations is more of surveying tool and doesn't require a grid pattern. you capture a frame at x altitude, increase the altitude and shoot again. we usually do a third and fourth, but the software is pretty accurate down to the inch. for special events, we don't really use fixed routes, we go where the action is and hover.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
From what I have read so far about folks trying to use the new waypoints feature on the M3 it might not work so well for grid pattern flying. It appears that given a raft of waypoints for a grid the M3 tries to smooth out the turns as if you were doing videos and needed continuous flight footage. It wasn't following in a pattern conducive to survey work. I think the M3E is the minimum for that type of application and/or stick with the M2 platform. The M2 can produce some seriously nice 3D photogrammetry models with its grid capabilities from some work I have seen with archaeological applications. Fortunately for me this is not a need I have with my M3 and I am not quite certain what I would use this for since I mostly do still photography.
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
turns out that the mavic 3 we lost in the swamp didn't have the latest firmware update. which is good since it wasn't approved. but survey often does their own thing, so we never know what we'll find when things go wrong.

that's a shame about the waypoints, but i don't think it will affect us much. i'm in line for an upgrade to the mavic 3t when we get them. the 3e doesn't really do much for us. the m2e is impressively capable.

i need to dig into the new update for my personal m3, but at this point we're a little slammed at work and pulling long hours. it will have to wait until after the new year.
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
usually the hours are long due to flying. we've had a lot of incidents lately, there's a lot of holiday traffic on the roadway and everyone is in a rush. i'm on evening shift this week, but i may end up flying overnight or get called in early due to a bad crash. then there's special events like lighting displays, shop lifting, car jackings and robberies. december is the worst time of the year for us.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I was thinking more about flying for fun :) First responder work during the holidays is anything but a holiday. I go out of my way to avoid going anywhere I don't have to go during the Xmas season. Most of the people on the roads are hell bent to get somewhere in a hurry while the gray hairs who haven't driven since last Xmas are out doing 15mph in 45mph zones. Perfect recipe for motor vehicles exchanging paint.
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
flying for fun? that's a thing? i haven't flown my personal drone since vacation in october. i may get it out soon to shoot a fishing boat near where i work, but i need some time off work first.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
All this drone talk reminds me that I need to top all of my batteries off for me lowly Mini 2 as I am getting on the road tomorrow. I promise to drive faster then 15mph Alan. :)
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
flying for fun? that's a thing? i haven't flown my personal drone since vacation in october. i may get it out soon to shoot a fishing boat near where i work, but i need some time off work first.
You do get to fly at work although not necessarily where you might want. Much better than desk life in front of computer screens trust me. This time of year there isn't much light to play with outside of working hours.
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
we were part of a peer to peer workshop today with a bunch of states. texas is setting up their drone program, so they put it on to see what other states are doing. we ended up canceling our drone training day for this month since we're expecting some inclement weather on thursday.

our indoor obstacle course where we train is fairly unique from what we've heard from other states. we have a bus that we can fly through (backdoor, front door and driver's window are all open), a fake stairwell, some tubes of various sizes, a makeshift hallway and a couple of posts with buckets attached on the top and bottom at a 45 degree angle so you have to do donuts around it to see what's in the bucket. we use some busted up dji air drones to train on, this way nobody is messing up their work drone when things go horribly wrong. prop guards work pretty well.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
Are you using FPV for these maneuvers? Sounds like an amazing place to hone your close quarter flight skills.

I would love to try learn how to handle something like that. Confidence from something like that would really help when I am trying to figure out how I am going to get my drone through the branches to shoot a waterfall I can't quite see :)
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
lol, no, not fpv. funny story with that, we had some of the big, tough swat guys training at the fire school with us. it's very disorienting to fly fpv indoors with hallways and close quarters with an fpv drone. and i think we may have been umm....messing with them just a little bit and used a cinewhoop drone, which is even more disorienting.

long story short, flying these tiny little fpv drones indoors made them all violently motion sick until they threw up. and yet every single one of them thought they'd be the one tough enough to handle it, despite seeing the guy in front of him sick up. they knew we were having them on, but they all were laughing and ragging on each other. one of the toughest guys went down sideways while still flying the drone.

yea... i don't wear anyone else's fpv goggles after that little adventure.

branches get tricky. they're hard to see when they're little and everywhere, and they can move in the wind or prop wash. we don't fly in the woods often. if we did, we'd find a clearing above and drop in from over top the trees, or just get the helicopter overhead.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I'd love to fly around in open skies with an FPV but with lots of room to move. The tales of the swat dudes is hilarious. It does leave a nice warning note about borrowing someone else's goggles :)

I have practiced close maneuvers a bit in some of the local parks using small obstacles as targets but playing around in the coastal forest was still more than a bit edgy. Small branches are everywhere.
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
open skies and a good point on the horizon to ground yourself are what you want with fpv flying. i've only had one or two fpv experiences, i won't try it now that i know, lol.

the prop guards we use indoors are pretty decent protection. i'm seriously surprised that our dji air drones are still running after some of the crashes we've had. but it's mainly for things coming into the props from the sides. it doesn't off much protection from the top or bottom from little branches or twigs.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
For me FPV would just be a curiosity thing - my primary use for my drone is still pictures taken from places I can't plant my tripod :)

The scary part about shooting waterfalls are all the tiny branch ends on the trees and bushes that are hanging over the creek and you are only about 10' over the water at most. You don't have a very big hole to hover into for the shot and then have to come back out the way you went in. Almost always a hand catch when you are done. At Sweet Creek the trail was narrow and muddy at the only place I had a good clearing in the forest cover to be able to fly in to shoot over the creek. I did that in a couple of places I flagged when I was on the trail earlier in the day with my DSLR.
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
sounds like a good strategy for getting your drone in and out of a tight spot.

i can't say that we've ever flown in the woods underneath the trees. we've had a few where we flew over the trees. but closest we came to in the woods was another state agency who did a mock rescue where a drone delivered a life jacket to a guy standing in a river. it was a tv stunt, nothing for real.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
Not sure how often I will be doing things like that but it was neat to figure out I could. A lot of the tree branches were bare so I had better line of sight than I would get with leaves. There are a lot of places along Sweet Creek that are simply inaccessible due to steep drop-offs and blackberry thickets but you can hear waterfalls from the trail. I did get to shoot two of them but couldn't figure out a way to access 2 others.
 

pepper

Well-Known Member
consider getting a dirt cheap drone. we keep some in our fleet. they're just disposable drones for us. send them into a building to get some sort of very bad visual. if we lose it, we lose it. you can do the same thing and just use it as a pathfinder. if you lose then you're only out about $30 finding a path through the woods. or you might find out that a waterfall isn't good enough to risk your mavic 3 and you can move on to the next.
 
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