Skip to content

2. Pre-Flight Planning on Laptop

Before you head to the field for a flight, you must complete the following steps and have the needed maps downloaded for offline use:

Determine Your Flight Area of Interest

  • Open Google Earth Engine.
  • Create a polygon over your area of interest for flight planning.
    • The sensor will record data inside/ the polygon only, so all calibration tarps and flightlines must be within this area.
    • The UAV setup and launch will occur outside/ of this polygon.
  • Save this polygon as a .kml on the laptop.

Make your Flight Plan

  • Open HA Ground Control and click the file button on the left hand side.
  • Navigate to where you stored the .kml of your flight area and import the polygon.

  • You should see the polygon appear on the map. On the right hand side you should see a survey button. Click it and there you can adjust flight lines etc.

    • Fly in cardinal directions if possible, but whatever makes the mose sense for your area.
    • Set over lab to 40% (Dependent on timing and size, but try to not go below 30%)
    • You will adjust the capture speed after calibration, but for right now set it to 3m/s - 5m/s
    • Move the launch button to where you will launch from, and then on the left hand side click "return" that will include that in the plan.
      • You can adjust the entrance point in the survey section on the right hand side by clicking rotate entrance point/

    • On the right hand side you should also see a fence button. You can add a flight fence to the area

    • On the top of the screen you should see estimates flight time. This should NOT be over 15 minutes. Preferably with some wiggle room.

  • On the left hand side click files again and save.as - you can then save your flight plan to a local folder etc so you can find it again in teh field.

Download Your Necessary Offline Maps

  • In HA Ground Control on both laptop and the controller.
  • Click the HA in the upper left-hand corner and click application settings.
  • Go to offline maps and select "add new set".
  • Move your screen to the area you want captured and set the zoom levels to what is needed for your flight plan (what you can/want to see resolution-wise).
  • Download tiles for Bing Hybrid as well as Copernicus Elevation.
  • Ensure tiles are fully downloaded on laptop and controller before going into the field.
    • I like to put everything on airplane mode and see if things are loading properly as if I was in teh field.

Turn off the Controller!

  • Before you headout, may sure the NavBay and controller are completely powered off. Press and hold that top middle button until a power off button appears on the screen. Click it.

Summary Checklist

You should now have downloaded: * Kml for flight area including calibration tarps. * .plan file stored locally * Offline maps loaded onto both computer and the GCS in HA Ground Control.