Drones over the Killam

[waxman]

Back in late October Phil Wilson, an architecture student at Dalhousie, contacted HEFA inquiring about using multirotors to image a view plane for his thesis project. After speaking with the student I was quite impressed with his initiative and agreed to assist him in capturing the images for his thesis. Mark Langille and I worked with him as flitelab and discussed the aspects of the commercial use of multirotors and how this project would be approached in the same way as any professional operation would be.

Permission for flight over the Dalhousie Killam Library and an SFOC from Transport Canada were obtained. We worked with the Dalhousie legal dept to address any of their concerns and educate them on the process. Its worthy to mention how supportive the Dalhousie legal dept was with this project. Our prime intent was to demonstrate how safe and beneficial the commercial use of "drones" can be and that there are many procedures and regulations already in place to ensure so.

The flight took place early Sunday morning, Dec 1, and commenced with a radio call to Shearwater traffic announcing the intentions of our flight and ended without incident and a successful series of photographs for the student. Phil was so pleased that he created a small video of the operation.

A very successful outreach effort for HEFA, flitelab, and the hobby. We now have a very keen Architect about to enter the workforce equipped with the knowledge of the proper way to utilize UAV technology for his industry.

https://vimeo.com/80735125

Cheers,

John

[astroflyer]

Great stuff John and Marc.

You should send this item too Cato Hansen for the January issue off the MAAC newsletter. A lot of people in the zone would be really interested in seeing this. A link to the video would be great and a few still photos if you have any.

Cato would really appreciate the submission. Would need to get to him before the end of the month.

[MarkL]

Great idea on the MAAC newsletter, would be nice to get the word out, particularly with the commercial requirements being fairly unknown to many. To date we have had success in dealing with TC on the SFOC process, but their is definitely a learning curve to figure out the ins and outs of the process.