By Andrea and Emily
To start off our second week of class, the Northampton police department demonstrated their DJI drone with the thermal camera on it. The drone was described as “trigger-happy” by Officer Mike as it moved swiftly with little movement of the sticks. The drone itself was operated using two separate remotes since the camera could rotates a full 360 degrees. We looked at the different pallets with the camera turned toward our class to see how each pallet can be useful for different situations. After the outdoor demonstration, we headed back to the classroom where we watched final presentations of the last SSEP drones class for inspiration for our final presentations.
White-hot palette from the thermal camera onboard the Inspire drone
Afterwards we headed for Northampton Airport where we learned about airspaces and heard a personal opinion of drones by the assistant manager. Interestingly, he said he only gets two to three calls for drone flights per week and about a quarter are females. We also got a chance to step into an airplane in the pilot seat and saw how airplanes have little visibility below making it impossible to see a drone.
Once we got back, we started to layout our plans for the final project. The film and cinematography group decided to talk about camera angles and how we use drones in movies using the footage we got in class. The invasive species group got footage of the invaded areas versus managed areas along with targeted invasive Area D. Many other groups got a chance to play around with the DroneBlocks program and try different maneuvers and angles for the drones.