Rides available in the Hexa Electric VTOL, mapping a railway project, low-altitude hurricane hunting, another reported drone strike, a DHS warning for private industry, another round of financing for PrecisionHawk, and spying on hippos with drones.
In 2020, Lift Aircraft plans a 25-city tour of it’s Hexa electric VTOL passenger drone. You can register for a flight on Lift’s website. It will cost $149-$249 depending on flight duration. The 432-pound electric VTOL uses 18 independent electric motors and propellers and is controlled through a triply redundant autopilot computer and a single 3-axis joystick. Or you can tap on the seven-inch touchscreen for a “Look mom, no hands!” mode.
Video: Beta Flight 001 - Colin Guinn
Norfolk Southern Railway asked themselves if they could use lower-cost UAVs to image project areas and stitch them into survey-grade 3D mosaics for the project team. They formed a UAV field team, got a Part 107 license, and designated a 5-mile linear project. What they learned will help them (and others) in future projects.
Hurricane hunters fly through hurricanes, but not at sea level where the winds are strongest. Scientists flew expendable Raytheon Coyote drones as low as 360 feet into several hurricanes and measured atmospheric conditions in winds as high as 194 miles per hour. These were deployed NOAA’s P-3 reconnaissance aircraft. The Coyote UAS is adaptable for a variety of missions including surveillance, electronic warfare and strike. A swarm of Coyote drones has successfully flown and demonstrated autonomous networking. A paper was recently published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: “Eye of the Storm: Observing Hurricanes with a Small Unmanned Aircraft System.”
Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC reports that their helicopter was struck midair by an object. At first, the pilot and reporter thought it was a bird strike but after landing and inspecting the damage to the helicopter tail, they believe it was a drone strike. The incident occurred at 7:15 pm, flying at 1100 feet.
In late November, the FBI’s Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a bulletin to private industry warning about the risk of exposing private data when using UAS...
