Meeting #2 January 24, 2020
Pierce Co Admin Office, Tacoma, WA
We had our second meeting to continue to discuss the use of drones in local public agencies in Western Washington. We met in the Pierce County Administrative Office in Tacoma. Thanks Greg from Pierce County for reserving the space for the meeting.
Attendees: Peter Keum (King Co), Greg Lang (Pierce Co), Joey Bisig (Pierce Co.), Miles Micheletti (WA DNR), Keisha Chinn(WA DOT), Jesse Alton (WA DOT), Fred (WA DOT), Roscoe Ames (WA DOT), Julian Sammons (Skokomish Tribe)
Meeting Summary
Following items were discussed:
- Airspace restrictions, see below for more info.
- Skyward flight system vs. Kittyhawk system and how Pierce County has migrated from Skyward to Kittyhawk. Kittyhawk system $600 per pilot/year has live stream capability
- Importance of managing pilot info & aircraft info to maintenance and current pilot certifications for public transparency purposes.
- Insurance and risk management. WSDOT for example has $1000 per drone using Allianz Global
- Operational datasets (such as individual flight photos before ortho/model processing) do not need to save for legal reasons. Delete individual photos and only retain finished products.
- FAA’s proposed remote ID: Standard remote ID & Limited remote ID, Greg has submitted to FAA comments on proposed rule, see below for more info.
- DroneDeploy Mapping Guide
- Pix4D has published series of papers since 2014 Research Paper
- Potential long term drone data storage: AWS Glacier
- DroneDeploy release terrain following feature for mission planning
- Peter will create Google group as a way to share information amongst the members through email.
Greg shared latest drone news
- New Evo 2 series
- New 100 dollar LIDAR sensor
- DJI lidar company
- Matrice200/210 Rain Failures1
- Matrice200/210 Rain Failures2
FAA Remote ID Topic
Proposed Remote ID rules comment period ends March 2nd. Rule proposal
Read into the details and please send in comments.
- Pierce County (Greg’s comment): Looking through the proposed rules and estimate details, I think the cost and reliability of a network based approach is under estimated and falsely confident posing a severe risk to the industry and non-workable solution for remote operating sites that our government organization frequents. I would support a simple broadcast radio approach not dependent on traffic services or subscriptions, and more importantly, not dependent on network connectivity that simply does not exist in so many areas of the west. These remote sites are often the most active areas for flight as we try to learn more about them and monitor conditions of these difficult to access areas. The communications complexity of current drone operations for business is already loaded with connectivity challenges which are increasing over time. This is not a smart reason to increase that burden. Give us a simple broadcast radio system, that can be built directly into the device, have lower power requirements, and is not vulnerable to network outages across large areas. Also, please work with industry to provide a very low cost retrofit able module that can be added to hobby or legacy platforms for the purpose of bringing them into compliance with an always on, always transmitting radio based ID signal.
Airspace Planing Resources
- FAA Maps of FAA UAS Data
- All UAS operators are encouraged to review the UAS-specific data and information provided on this website before operating. This application can be used to view FAA UAS data on a map. For additional instructions on how to use the application, click on the Information icon once the map opens.
- Visualize it: See FAA UAS Data on a Map
- VFR charts online viewer
- VFR charts FAA download site
- FAA facility map viewer
- DJI Geozone map
Next Meeting:
- April of 2020
- Location : TBD
- Topic Agenda: TBD
Questions and Comments
Please Email comments and suggestions to Peter Keum: peter.keum@kingcounty.gov