Solar Flare

[Rchawks]

Will this have any effect on our Drones today?

 

[msinger]

See more details here:

Geomagnetic Storm Watch

This weekend there is a Geomagnetic coming for Friday - Sunday. This could cause problems with GPS satellites and radio waves. So as our drones use both is these just be careful this weekend and keep a close eye on how your drone is acting. Rare-severe-solar-storm

mavicpilots.com

 

[PanoVolo]

hopefully one effect will be a stream of pictures and videos but it's cloudy here (

 

[Meta4]

Will this have any effect on our Drones today?

The effect will be the same as it's been for every other high Kp event.
Zilch

 

[GFields]

I don't see it causing any issues

 

[kpjamro]

Will this have any effect on our Drones today?

Some farmers along the northern tier and Canada could not fly their patterns over last weekend because of GPS interference. I was curious about the mechanism for this and found a reference:

https://web.stanford.edu/group/scpnt/gpslab/website_files/sbas-ion_wg/sbas_iono_scintillations_white_paper.pdf

Simple version: Ionospheric Scintillation | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center

It seems, if the GPS signal has to pass though the auroral zone, it suffers from a particular type of disruption called scintillation. This is a condition where the signal suffers sudden changes in amplitude and phase, which makes it hard for the GPS receiver to lock on.

Because the receiver can still hear the signal, but cannot make sense of it, you get message about "GPS interference". And without enough valid birds, you cannot fly the waypoint pattern that farmers use.

None of the GPS birds were actually out of service during the weekend. If you were outside that zone you would not see this interference.

However, the geomagnetic effects of the storm can cause ranging errors, particularly in the single-frequency receivers used in consumer drones. This is only loosely connected to the K-index. IMHO the best indicator is the Total Electron Count of the ionosphere. You can find up to date values on line and even get a 1-hour-ahead forecast:

IMPC Website: One hour Forecast TEC Map, Global

This gives you some idea if the accuracy of GPS-indicated position is better or worse than usual. The range error is the error in distance between you and the satellite when the bird is directly overhead. Of course, normally the birds are all over the sky and 15 or more satellites are combined to get the position. So it's not a direct indication of error in your particular location.

But it's more useful than the K-index.

Ranging errors impact waypoint navigation including lichi, DroneLink, Hyperlapse, and RTH.

This same site has a graph showing where the range error is *changing* rapidly which may be interesting Its a bit hard to read though:

IMPC Website: One minute maximum ROTI, Global