Some thoughts on how 3DR can help commercial Solo customers

bluesgeek · Aug 6, 2016

As I prepare for the sUAS remote pilot certification test for Part 107, I've been looking at the area of Maintenance and Inspection from the Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Advisory Circular, AC 107-2.

It's a long document so I edited it—cutting it down to leave what I think are the pertinent areas on maintenance. I've made that document available here.

I find interesting the emphasis on having protocols for scheduled and unscheduled maintenence, and the suggestion that the first choice would be to follow the manufacturer's recommendations for maintenance, and in the absence of that, to create one.

I believe that manufacturers should be publishing documentation for scheduled maintenance that addresses the language of these new rules. For example, what would be the rated life of a motor, and is there a life cycle that would call for replacement of a working motor after a period of hours of operation? IMHO, a detailed protocol from 3DR would not only help the owner and pilot more easily comply with the rules, but could be a selling point. for commercial operations.

Ideally, this would be integrated into the Solo app and would track operation hours, populate logs with the data, and generate digital and printable reports that could be used for the pilot's recordkeeping.

The second thing I noticed is that Chapter 7.3.4 Item 9 reads: "Calibrate UAS compass prior to any flight." What would 3DR tech support have to say about that practice?

That's all for now.

RichWest · Aug 6, 2016

This is a good conversation starter regarding commercial operation. The reality is that you should have several check lists;

Pre-flight - Bird, Controller and then Camera.
Maintenance - Bird and Controller - Scheduled and Un-Scheduled

Speaking from the perspective of a mechanic and having more than one bird in your fleet. Accounting, Management and Pilot will influence my judgement to what is acceptable of not. Failure of systems will always be my fault. In a smaller operation, like many here, this would be Profit/Cost, End-User expectations and pilot/mechanic experience level.

It really is in the hands of the individual commercial operation to determine maintenance frequency and to what level. As they are the operator and should know their platform's weaknesses and the conditions that the platform was subjected to while in operation. The original manufacture can only provide a suggested hours or life based on the spec'd sub-components. And these details are typically theoretical rather than real world evaluation based time and conditions. This is reality based on chinese manufacturing of the various components, hobby grade.

You may find this interesting. I was able to speak with three aerial survey companies recently and to their actual pilots. In all three cases, the pilot was just the pilot. Other than pre-flight checks, he performed no maintenance on the bird(s), I confirmed that they all used 3rd party services. We are talking birds in the range of 10 to 25K in value, mainly helicopters and Octos. Side note, they took no videos, only still photos of the required subjects.

Their fleet of birds were never of the same gen or type. You name it, on the hardware side everything was different. In my opinion this is a poor practice for a commercial operation. How are you able determine maintenance frequency when you have four brands and ratings of motors in your fleet? These variables alone makes the whole commercial operation endeavor inconsistent from the start.

Seems I side tracked the original subject, but my point is how varied these platforms are and how commercial operators tend to vary their platforms. Understand we are coming from a hobby level of hardware and user base. The levels of performance, to your original question, is off by years based on the current industry acceptance - hobby grade.

Sorry, I had time on my hands, as I am waiting on a battery to charge...