Title: Lesson 3: Drone operation and flight performance
Course: Image acquisition using drones > Section: Course Content

This short lesson will introduce the aspects of a flight preparation that aims to improve the performance of the mission in terms of quality mapping, duration of flight and clearness of imagery.

Objectives:

The main objective is to create awareness of the internal (manageable) and external (not manageable) factors affecting the performance of the flight and the decisions to be taken.

Entrance requirements:

Followed the previous lesson of this course and conducted the exercises.

Notions to be grasped:

At the end of this lesson the participant should…

- be able to calculate the center of gravity of the aircraft (drone);
- be able to calculate the MTOM of the drone;
- understand the mass balance calculus;
- be able to take into consideration the climatic factors as constraints for the flight operation to go or no go for a mission.

Learning activities:

- Study the file and videos in “EENSAT_Drone_Operation_03_Flight_Performance.pptx”.
- Prepare exercises as described under “Tasks”.

Tasks:

Unzip the file “EENSAT_Drone_Operation_03_Flight_Performance.zip”.

1. Go through the PPT and study the lesson.
2. Ask questions you did not understand but only after searching for explanatory material.
3. As practical, conduct Practical 3: Drone fit to fly. Build device able to measure the total weight of the drone, the individual weights of each portion of the landing gear in contact with the ground and calculate the center of gravity for the drone in different (but possible) configurations.

Planned time frame for this lesson:

5 hours