AT 209 LAB 2 - NIST OTL
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Weather: Sunny, Wind speed 0-5 mph, 83 Degrees Fahrenheit
LAANC: 200 FT Auto Approval
Team Members: Nik Auclair, Hailey Manuel, Meadow Rosenthal
Drone Number: Mavic 2 Pro A (FA3K7WYW4N)
This lab covers the NIST OTL Basic Proficiency flight test. Thursday was a good day to fly, even if it was a little hot. The setup is pretty simple. It starts with unloading all the buckets and landing areas from the van. There were 3 sets of buckets/landing pads so each group had to find a matching set. Once that was complete, we had to set up the lanes properly. This consisted of putting the Drone case (acting as our flight line in place of the clock), landing pad, and buckets 1, 2, and 3 in a line, 10 feet apart from each other. This also meant that 10 ft. = S, which is a must-know for flying this course. After that we made sure we were familiar with the 3 tests we would be flying, as well as how the VO and proctor should go about participating.
I started out as VO for Meadow. There was nothing particularly challenging about being VO in this case, it was just a matter of finding out how the drone looks in its perfect position and memorizing that to make the right call-outs to assist the PIC. Making the call-outs was pretty easy and seemed to be very helpful for Meadow - having your head down in the screen can make it easy to lose track of what's really happening. Meadow did well and completed the course in time.
After that, I took my turn flying the course. Readjusting to the Mavic 2 Pro was weird after all the flying I did on the newer Mavic 3 Multispec and Matrice M350 drones, both members of DJI's enterprise suite and amazing to fly. The Mavic 2 felt sluggish in comparison -- perhaps a warmup would have helped. Either way it ended up okay. I definitely had to take my time with positioning, but every picture was aligned and each landing was accurate, so I scored the full points with a 9:37 time. The course itself is not bad at all, I think I could half my time with a fair bit of practice.
Pictures of our setup, my score sheet, and a few photos of my alignments can be found below.
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