For the first time that I’ve seen, the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has published a public statement regarding DJI not cooperating on a timely basis in an accident investigation. I don’t believe an accident report has been released yet. But apparently, it has been at least a year. The UK AAIB statement says: … Read more
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 … Read more
Around 3:30 on 1-29-2018 Wake Forest Fire Department drone was requested to participate in the search for a missing Rocky Mount resident, Stephen Miller (70) who was last seen two days prior on Saturday according to the WRAL online story. Chief Ed Barrett and drone pilot Steve Rhode arrived in Rocky Mount at approximately 4:40 … Read more
The local police tactical unit and I recently conducted an active shooter drone flight exercise flying inside a big box store. These are large stores like Sam’s Club, Walmart, Best Buy, or even most major grocery stores. The DJI Matrice 210 is a larger Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) and what we learned from the exercise … Read more
Dispatch Call: Water Rescue What We Knew Headed to Call: It was reported a woman on a kayak had fallen out of the kayak and could not be seen. Aircraft: DJI Matrice 210 with Zenmuse XT FLIR and 180X Zenmuse Z30 cameras. UAS/Drone Actions: Upon arrival the most apparent optimum landing zone was not accessible … Read more
Here at the Wake Forest Fire Department I finally gave up looking for a UAS rescue basket solution to deliver small items to victims in remote locations. There was no apparent solution available that met the wish list needs for our DJI Matrice 210 delivery solution. After looking high and low for a mechanism to … Read more
I’m hoping this will become somewhat of an ongoing series of articles about lessons learned from actual public safety UAS flying with the amazing Wake Forest Fire Department. A structure fire call came in for a home that had already been burning for some time and was fully involved when we were dispatched. I was … Read more
As the Wake Forest Fire Department UAS pilot, one of the issues I have to face is dealing with an unplanned event and flying the incident on short notice but provide optimum data gathering abilities and mission accomplishment. I wish my flights had the luxury of being on the schedule but when the call comes … Read more