That was one of the weirdest and coolest experiences for me at TPS -- Long line work in an S-55 -- Tighten lap belt, undo shoulder straps, lean halfway out of helo and hover while looking straight down. Awesome
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Random Griz Aviation Musings
- Thread starter Griz882
- Start date
AIRMMCPORET
Plan “A” Retired
A couple of those in central Washington they use for ag purposes, like blowing the rain off the cherry crops. Always reminds of the TV show Riptides.🤣
I've seen these aircraft at work up in Michigan as well. Piston powered S-58's. Efficient at what they do and its a necessary ag mission. Soon these will be replaced by battery electric quadcopter drones - DJI has a number of fofferings in this space and they are adopted in Asia, EU, Africa, etc. US are kind of the holdouts when it comes to innovative industrial drones - not to mention xenophobic bias against excellent tech companies like DJI.
I don't think it's xenophobic bias so much as just distrust because it is Chinese (if it was Taiwanese, a lot of those people would have no problem with DJI).
Very cool, I didn't know those were still used.
I spent years working with the FAA to get a local airspace transitioned from a Class E Surface to just Class E so we could do drone stuff there. Then we went to fly our DJI, and it wouldn’t let us! After digging in, we found that all flight planning involved a round trip of the data to servers in China and back. They hadn’t updated their maps of US airspace on those Chinese servers and thought it was still Class E Surface. So China shut down our drone. When it wasn’t shut down, it was recording the track. We were doing defense work with it.
This was some 6-7 years ago now.
Similar with Bambu 3D printers, sending your data from the design software on your computer in your shop to the printer sitting right next to it means your data takes a trip all the way to a server in China and back. There are ways to skip that, but it involves more effort.
If you want your IP to remain your IP, DJI is not the way. Fine if you're taking aerial videos at a wedding reception, not so fine if you're conducting sensitive missions for DoD, DOE, or law enforcement.
The US would do well to spin up a domestic drone company for those efforts. However, it's the nature of our acquisitions system that any products coming out of that would be expensive, non-intuitive, and have strange and frustrating user limitations.
Bingo. China wants access to everything you do, and full control of "your" product. An aircraft OEM I used to work for was doing business with China, collaborating on a new aircraft design. They broke off the relationship when, among other things, Chinese folks were found photocopying company IP and sending it to Beijing. The compromised material went far beyond the program that was being actively worked on.
