Drones in SAR

Here are considerations for operating a drone for SAR missions.

1. A part 107 pilot’s license is required

In order to fly a drone for a SAR mission in New Mexico, one must have their part 107 pilot’s license. Obtaining your part 107 is a considerable undertaking, and for many this is a barrier to participating. Fortunately, there exists an enormous quantity of free educational material online. It’s completely possible to learn everything necessary to pass the test on your own, provided one brings to bear a healthy amount of discipline and dedication.

2. Thermal cameras are crucial

If you have a drone with an infrared camera, you (and your drone) are much more useful on a search. It is surprisingly hard to spot a person on a controller screen even in optimum conditions. In most situations, finding a person on the screen is way harder using visible wavelengths than it is in the infrared. This is true even during the day, even during most summer days. How many days do we have where every natural object reaches neary 100˚F? Naturally there is considerably more contrast in the winter when the subject is alive and warm against a snowy backdrop—in that situation a person can blaze like a beacon in the infrared. Regardless, thermal is superior to visible for most SAR missions, and the thermal camera on cold dark nights is where the drone is most powerful.

A side note: sometimes subjects are able to kindle a fire. In that case, the drone merely has to ascend high enough, have a good look around, and that campfire will stand out like a sun. Simply ascending to the AGL ceiling of 400 ft immediately after takeoff for that quick 360 survey is a good habit to cultivate for SAR missions.

3. The following technical skills are important; learn and practice them if you and your drone to be an asset to SAR

  • Know how to enter a waypoint into your controller and fly the drone to that waypoint.
    • Imagine you are asked to go to a specific set of coordinates to clear a small pond or feature; can you enter the coordinates and altitude to get it done?
    • You need to be able to accept various coordinate formats. You can employ a separate conversion app if necessary, but you need to be able to accept whatever coordinates are provided and get the entered.
  • Know how to report the coordinates of your drones position.
    • Imagine you find the subject—now where are they? We need coordinates.
  • Know how to follow a trail for a certain distance.
  • Know how to pre-program a grid flight pattern for searching an area.
    • Given a mission to search an area, know how to use either the build-in controller software, or else third-party software, to generate a grid pattern, upload it to the drone, and have it fly the automated pattern while you stare at the screen.
    • Know (through practicing) what the grid spacing should be, given a flight altitude, ground cover, and size of the area. Practice until you have a system for generating a grid, ready for flight, in less than 20 minutes.
  • Know how, and have the equipment on hand, to extract the track record from your drone and transfer it to the laptop at incident base.
    • This may require a laptop, memory card reader, etc in order to download and convert the track file. Practice this ahead of time, work out the system. Incident Command can accept the file in .gpx or .kml format, but not a proprietary DJI format.
  • In the event that your drone crashes or loses connectivity, know how to extract the last coordinates from the controller.
    • This is unlikely, particularly if you are using a modern DJI drone, but the adage goes: “failing to prepare is preparing to fail”. If your drone has issues, you want to know where to start looking for it, as soon as possible.

4. Have a strobe light(s) for night-time operations

Most drone hobbyists don’t fly in the dark, and will not keep a strobe light mounted to the drone (grams count). The difficulty is remembering to bring it and mount it for a night mission.

For that matter, it’s important to practice flying in the dark as well. It is quite a different experience, and a SAR mission is not the best first time to try it.

5. Be ready to put your drone down at a moment’s notice, if a helicopter shows up

Ideally, the drone pilot will be forewarned well in advance of a helicopter entering the airspace. Moreover, the helicopter should not be entering a TFR anyway (if one is in place) without the explicit permission of the AOBD (air operations branch director—in practice this is usually the IC).

Things do not always adhere to these ideals. There are some good and many bad reasons why this mistake may occur. The drone pilot may have launched at a separate location from incident base, and incident base became preoccupied with other tasks (not good). The drone pilot cannot actively fly and speak on the radio simultaneously, so they might not be able to answer the radio when called (not good). The Incident Commander may not have been informed that a helicopter was inbound (not good). Regardless the not-good reason, if a helicopter is suddenly sighted “coming in hot”, it’s still the drone pilot’s responsibility to safely avoid collisions. It pays to have practiced rapid RTBs (return to base) and developed some comfort with flying low.

6. Have a plan and maintain a capability to speak on the radio with Incident Base, even in the middle of a flight

The optimum solution is an assistant. A support person to work the radio while you fly. This is not absolutely necessary however, provided you have the radio nearby and can go into a monitored hover for a few seconds, maintaining control, while speaking on the radio.

This is especially important to practice, because you want to make sure that keying up your 8 W radio right next to your sensitive drone transceiver doesn’t adversely affect your drone control or telemetry.

7. An SGI is required for BVLOS

Realistically, anything over ~0.5 mi will require BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) flight. BVLOS operations require a waiver from the FAA (on the path to obtaining your part 107 license, you will learn the rules associated with BVLOS).

For SAR we use an SGI (special government interest) waiver because of the emergency nature of our missions. To fill out the SGI paperwork, the following items of information are required:

  • Pilot info
    • all pilot’s names
    • all pilot’s part 107 license numbers
    • all pilot’s phone numbers
  • Drone info
    • Make
    • model
    • FAA registration #
  • Date and time window requested
  • Area of coverage
    • Preferably a circle, defined by a center point and a radius, although other geometries are fine
  • Mission #
  • Description of the event requiring the waiver

The FAA, if it grants the waiver, will establish a TFR (temporary flight restriction) that corresponds to your request. Note that one does not request a TFR, one requests the SGI and it is always accompanied with a TFR if it is granted.

8. Generate and use a packing list for remembering all necessary gear before leaving the house.

Make your own list, own it. You simply cannot expect to remember all the little things that you will need, while partially awake in the middle of the night. It is a real drag to get everything ready and drive for hours just to discover that you forgot the props, or the batteries that were charging on the side table.

This is an incomplete list to get you started:

  • Before leaving home:
    • Pack:
      • Part 107 license and proof of currency
      • Drone registration
      • Lots of batteries
      • Battery charger (we usually have a generator at Incident Base)
      • Laptop & charger
      • Card reader & cords for connecting the drone to the laptop
      • spare props
      • tools to replace props
    • Check NOTAMS
    • Check weather (wind, visibility, cloud ceiling)
    • Establish mission parameters (searching vs overwatch vs radio repeater function? area search or trail clearing?)
    • Download maps for the area to the GCS (ground control station—probably the drone controller)
    • Create a mission if necessary in the software app mission planner
    • Communicate with AC/IC/DroneMaster to establish the SGI for BVLOS, if necessary
    • Look at the map, if you have it, and scout potential launch locations for good LOS
    • Clean off old SD cards to make room for new images/video
    • Charge batteries
  • While driving
    • warm up cold batteries
    • continue charging batteries using inverter
  • On-scene prep:
    • re-check NOTAMS & weather
    • establish an LZ
      • check for overhead powerlines and obstacles
      • Lay out the LZ mat
      • Use cones if necessary to exclude looky-loos
    • Check drone battery charge
    • Check controller battery charge
    • Check googles battery charge
    • Check/secure props
    • Check/secure loose cabling, cameras, etc
  • Power up drone and controller
  • Perform compass check by manually rotating drone
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