I went to fly over the site of the largest conventional weapons explosion ever. It happened in November 1944 at Fauld in Staffordshire. I used to catch rabbits in the crater 30 years ago, in that time the trees and shrubs have changed it from how I remembered it. The story is tragic, over 3500 tons of high explosive went up in the blast. It was a bomb store for the RAF. 90 souls were lost. An entire farm was destroyed with the farmhouse seen to be blown over 100 yards into the air. The blast was felt in Switzerland. The resulting crater is 1/4 mile across and 300 feet deep. Being in the Rememberance period and with my father, uncles and grandfather having fought in the war it is a local feature that I wanted to visit. I did some land based pictures of the memorial, warning signs that have been put up in the intervening 30 years and the view from the rim of the crater. I then went to launch the drone to get a suitable aerial picture of the magnitude of the crater and its place in the local landscape.
I logged my flight with the drone assist people. It gave me a warning of being close to a red zone and to fly with caution. Fine, I wasn't going to be doing anything fancy or far off. Up she went and I started to rotate the view to frame my shot when everything froze! A red warning box jumped up, I couldn't read it all as the type is too small, even on the tablet. It told me the RTH course would take me through a prohinited zone. The crater is still owned by the M.O.D. and the signal was jammed. I couldn't move it, left right, forward, backwards.... it wouldn't respond to any inputs whatsoever, but I still had a view through the camera. I tried the RTH and she moved a bit. That was enough to regain control and I flew her manually and took a couple of shots while I still could, then landed her in the grass field about 20 yards away.
The crater isn't manned or anything and it isn't close to any MOD active stations or sites, but is still MOD property - it is a nature paradise because no human activity takes place there. I wanted to shoot a panoramic, but that feature wouldn't respond even though a normal picture would. It said it was out of range - it was about 40 feet away!
I will go with what I have got, but if that happens, how do you regain control of the aircraft if RTH doesn't bring it out of the freeze? Do you just have to wait until it runs out of juice and lands in the trees below? I was above the treetops and with direct line of sight and only about 20 yards range at most. I think I took a sensible course of action to land the drone safely, but is there any other override I could have used?
I logged my flight with the drone assist people. It gave me a warning of being close to a red zone and to fly with caution. Fine, I wasn't going to be doing anything fancy or far off. Up she went and I started to rotate the view to frame my shot when everything froze! A red warning box jumped up, I couldn't read it all as the type is too small, even on the tablet. It told me the RTH course would take me through a prohinited zone. The crater is still owned by the M.O.D. and the signal was jammed. I couldn't move it, left right, forward, backwards.... it wouldn't respond to any inputs whatsoever, but I still had a view through the camera. I tried the RTH and she moved a bit. That was enough to regain control and I flew her manually and took a couple of shots while I still could, then landed her in the grass field about 20 yards away.
The crater isn't manned or anything and it isn't close to any MOD active stations or sites, but is still MOD property - it is a nature paradise because no human activity takes place there. I wanted to shoot a panoramic, but that feature wouldn't respond even though a normal picture would. It said it was out of range - it was about 40 feet away!
I will go with what I have got, but if that happens, how do you regain control of the aircraft if RTH doesn't bring it out of the freeze? Do you just have to wait until it runs out of juice and lands in the trees below? I was above the treetops and with direct line of sight and only about 20 yards range at most. I think I took a sensible course of action to land the drone safely, but is there any other override I could have used?
