Public Safety Drone News

This post was submitted by the great people at Oak Island Water Rescue. We were dispatched, along with Oak Island Fire Department, to locate and assist a kayaker that had gone missing near Sheep Island. He had been boating with a friend who lost contact with him and called 911 when he could not find him after several minutes of …

I recently started a new group that is focused on North Carolina public safety assistance. The group provides aviation help and assistance to North Carolina public safety groups: fire, rescue, EMS, and law enforcement. If you are a North Carolina-based drone pilot that is involved in public safety, please consider becoming a volunteer pilot. Visit NCVRP.org for more information and …

It appears the Pentagon has put an end to the ridiculous fear and knee-jerk reaction of so many people over DJI software issues. Don’t get me wrong, I have serious concerns about the operation of the DJI aircraft that have never applied for or achieved an Airworthiness Certification. And now that support and development are ending for models, I think …

A DJI Matrice 300 RTK accident raises many issues to consider. This seems like a classic chain of the accident example where the issues that resulted in serious tendon and nerve damage began before the flight ever happened. This accident occurred on May 6, 2021, in Georgia. According to the NTSB report the pilot was operating under CFR Part 107 …

North Carolina drone pilot Michael Jones received a cease and desist letter in 2019 from the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors (NCBEES). He had been put on notice in 2018 there was a potential issue. The letter stated he had been “previously notified that the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors had initiated …

Before you read this I need to make sure you understand my goal here is to provide advice, guidance, experience, and opinions to public safety pilots to help them fly safely and to reduce unnecessary and avoidable personal liability for aviation activities. I sent out an email to my list subscribers about DJI Pulls the Plug on Your Big Drone …

May 24, 2021 – See my update at the bottom of this post. My condolences to your investment in DJI products costing tens of thousands of dollars. The plug has been officially pulled by DJI on a number of products. This has been a problem brewing for at least a year. My advice was to avoid the expensive products and …

I was just working on uploading items to my aviation store at RareAviation.com and came across this image in one of my historical documents of a drone from 1947. The US Army Air Force was conducting testing on making a B-17 Fly Fortress a pilotless drone and as a demonstration, they flew the thing right at the U.S. Capitol. Judging …

Getting Real Results from Public Safety Drone Operations I recently learned about the Hype Cycle. It certainly seems to fit to what many early adopters have experienced in public safety drone operations. According to the Hype Cycle hypothesis, the advent of new technology is followed by a steep uptick that eventually crests in a “peak of inflated expectations” only to …

I recently wrote a post about FLIR clearly saying thermal cameras can’t see through foliage. See this post. My research for that post led to a developing drone artificial intelligence (AI) solution to effectively see through trees with current thermal cameras to find people below tree canopies. I had the pleasure of tracking down the principal investigator developing this technology …