Flying inside a church?

[Lady Rover]

So, after all we did decide not to do it.
To much risk to loose a drone before the job is completed.
Job not complete would have meant no money either...

Sketchy GPS indoors, the risk of misguiding the visual position system by dust and various height levels made it to risky.
Especially as we would have had the need to fly very close to the wall and very high up.
The downwash from the props is also focused very very much downward and fans out a lot less than expected when at altitude.
At ground level it's the deflection by the ground which fans it out.

Sometimes technology is just yet not as advanced as you would like it to be. At least on prosumer level equipment.

The only other option is a 100 foot cherrypicker now...

 

[hiflyer201]

Some times the best laid plans....my Spark is great for blowing the sheet music of the piano.... dust not so much... and god knows there’s plenty to work with

 

[Huo]

Well we can't that far off of being able to do this more easily. DJI does sell drones to agro industry with the 'farm mode' for crop spraying i believe, just need to suck up dust instead of spray chemicals.

 

[Stradigal]

I've done this exact job in various Church of England buildings.

Prop guards are a must and you are right that gps and vision sensors need to be switched off. Prop wash causes issues with sensors too, so it is really a manual flight.

I use an M2P which isn't ideal for this - M2Z would be better, as you could stay at a distance and still grab the data/images you need - although in my instance, image cropping has been ok.

In my instance, getting "close enough" has kept me out of trouble and the insight gained for client has been good enough to action.

 

[Lady Rover]

Thanks, but I doubt that you needed to fly 1.5ft from the wall consistently.
This was not a photo job. Read my opening post

 

[Stradigal]

I did fly 1m out... but not with the purpose being dusting! Whoa!!

 

[BigAl07]

I've done this exact job in various Church of England buildings.

Prop guards are a must and you are right that gps and vision sensors need to be switched off. Prop wash causes issues with sensors too, so it is really a manual flight.

I use an M2P which isn't ideal for this - M2Z would be better, as you could stay at a distance and still grab the data/images you need - although in my instance, image cropping has been ok.

In my instance, getting "close enough" has kept me out of trouble and the insight gained for client has been good enough to action.

Zoom? This project isn't about the camera at all but using the air from the aircraft props to lift and remove settled dust in high locations.

 

[THE CYBORG]

I did fly 1m out... but not with the purpose being dusting! Whoa!!

Now then you did say “ I’ve done the exact same job “ but you didn’t realy.

 

[Stradigal]

Nope. Never done dusting. I misread it as a data capture job, where dust is present, in a church...

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Interesting im going to try it on my ceiling fan as I have never been able to reach it.
But I am going to use GPS and not atti mode as thats to sketch for me.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Drone in the rain
Coal

 

[xspwhite]

If the dust has been building for a period of years, then it would probably be to hard and heavy to be blown off by the drone.

If I was to try such a project I would use a cheaper drone like a syma or hubsan.

 

[Oneball 1971]

[Removed by Admin]

If there is a large amount of dust, which it seems to be we are talking about comprising organs and clearing the dust up off the floor. I'd be more worried about it being sucked in through the vents of my drone and maybe comprising my drone.

Amen ?

 

[FiLiNuX]

Wow!!! I have watched several action / adventure movies in the past and heard the helicopter pilot scream to the action hero's "We are DUSTING OFF in five minutes if your back here or not!!". Now I know where the term might have started!!

Jokes (especially bad jokes) aside, hats off to you for being creative and thinking of potential new uses for drones as well as helping others in your church.

 

[Lady Rover]

Actually we would have vacuumed the drone every few minutes. This was all about the loose stuff not the stuff baked up in the long run.
The later is not getting airborne so poses no thread to the organ.
Btw. we were experimenting with a fan on a stick. Front-end computerfan, backend battery pack. All well below 400g and attached under the drone belly or above.

Well anyway, won't happen this time around unfortunately.

 

[JimSteadman]

Hi,

I got asked to fly inside a church to de-dust the walls ;-)
Apparently the dust compromises the organ over time and the organ builder suggested cleaning the walls.

As scaffolding is to complicated and expensive and the drone props create a lot of airflow, we want to use the drone to propel the dust which has settled on the rough plaster in the air and than wipe up the majority of it once it's settled on the floor.

Here is the question, has anyone experience flying indoors?

How good does the position control work?
Most likely one needs to switch the sensors off as the dust will compromise them.
Not sure about GPS reception.

Most likely I'll fly with a Mavic Air or Mavic Pro. Prop guard attached.

Thanks for your thoughts & suggestions,

Fran

Did you do it? I did fly with the prop guards attached, but could not get the drone above about 5 meters high. 10 meters would be great. I don't want to get to the top, but I need to photograph some windows which are difficult to see from the floor because of a large 'crown' above the altar. The drone refused to go higher and I couldn't figure out why.

 

[Thomas B]

Did you do it? I did fly with the prop guards attached, but could not get the drone above about 5 meters high. 10 meters would be great. I don't want to get to the top, but I need to photograph some windows which are difficult to see from the floor because of a large 'crown' above the altar. The drone refused to go higher and I couldn't figure out why.

Thread author hasn’t been seen since May 2020, but maybe you’ll get lucky.

 

[Johnmcl7]

Did you do it? I did fly with the prop guards attached, but could not get the drone above about 5 meters high. 10 meters would be great. I don't want to get to the top, but I need to photograph some windows which are difficult to see from the floor because of a large 'crown' above the altar. The drone refused to go higher and I couldn't figure out why.

You can see from post #21 they didn't go ahead:

Flying inside a church?

So, after all we did decide not to do it. To much risk to loose a drone before the job is completed. Job not complete would have meant no money either... Sketchy GPS indoors, the risk of misguiding the visual position system by dust and various height levels made it to risky. Especially as we...

mavicpilots.com

 

[Kyle76]

Wow!!! I have watched several action / adventure movies in the past and heard the helicopter pilot scream to the action hero's "We are DUSTING OFF in five minutes if your back here or not!!". Now I know where the term might have started!!

I think the "dust off" term for helicopter extraction came from removing troops (especially wounded) from a hot LZ, not from actually stirring up dust.