2000 acres in one flight! That’s right, we did 2000 acres on one battery with five ground targets and around 30 check shots. The results amazed us!
We were not trying to do a super tight topo survey. What we were doing was more focused on training for a client and teaching them how to fly their new Quantum Trinity F90+. When conducting training it is always good to use real world projects. For this training we were performing a plant survey. Typical plant surveys don’t require a lot of ground control or check shots. As it turned out most of our check shots ended up being very tight, and most shots were within a tenth vertically from our flown surface. We were amazed that such a large area could be flown with minimal ground control, and how well the data came out.
When you come right down to it, this is what the Trinity F90+ is designed for. It is made for land surveying and generating high accuracy topography over vast areas. Looking at the Quantum spec sheet it shows at 120m AGL is capable of 1700 acres per flight. That’s impressive. However, now using just a couple batteries, we can cover several square miles in a day! This means a contiguous model can be made for a whole mine site, tailing dam or construction site. Up until now, we had been flying small multi-rotor drones at around 75 acres per flight. This is a game changer.
The Quantum Fixed wing drone is a vertical takeoff drone that flies for 90-minutes per battery at around 60kph. This drone has around a 6-foot wingspan. Although we try to avoid it, we do end up flying in some tough conditions. We have been caught out more than a few times in wind gust up to around 20mph. It would be good to avoid this if possible, but we did get the job done. Once the Quantum F90+ moves into forward flight it handles the wind very well.
Fixed wing drones glide and are much more efficient than multi-rotor drones. Up until now the only problem with fixed wing drones was that you needed a runway to takeoff and land. This is where the newly added vertical takeoff and landing feature solves many problems over traditional fixed wing drones.
If you got some big jobs and would like to see the Quantum Trinity F90+ in action, let us know. We would be happy to show you.