I1 on Ice Breaker

[JohnHan]

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-drone-icebreaker-treacherous-antarctic.html

How do you calibrate the compass on a steel ship? You don't.

 

[The Editor]

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-drone-icebreaker-treacherous-antarctic.html

How do you calibrate the compass on a steel ship? You don't.

Correct! You shouldn't even attempt to (and its pointless anyway)
James Rennie is clearly clueless - and the Inspire doesn't have a manual mode as he was quoted as saying.
Glad he's flying out at sea and miles away from me.

 

[Tim]

Step out onto the ice? ;-)

 

[m00se]

He may have calibrated it at the nearest location before entering the ship and hoped for the best......

Either way, landing in ATTI would have been fun for him if it was windy...... its a good use for a cuadcopter in my opinion though, there are some clear advantages to ships having this kind of tool available to them.

 

[Tups]

We flew an I1 from a Russian icebreaker in the Barents Sea, Kara Sea and the Gulf of Ob last spring without major issues. Our last proper calibration was in Helsinki, Finland, and while we more or less successfully calibrated it on board on a small patch of wooden deck covering (which was also the only place where it would take off), I'm not sure how successful it was in the presence of 3000 tons of steel. Originally, we were going to re-do the calibration on sea ice once we had reached the test area, but as we experienced hardly any issues during the first flights over open water (occasional compass errors), in the end we didn't do it. Our pilot also got better at landing on a moving ship day by day.

 

[m00se]

I have had to stick my inspire on a stack of wooden pallets in order to get it away from the Rebar in the floor and allow the motors to arm.

 

[southerndoug]

Correct! You shouldn't even attempt to (and its pointless anyway)
James Rennie is clearly clueless - and the Inspire doesn't have a manual mode as he was quoted as saying.
Glad he's flying out at sea and miles away from me.

Well in fairness to James Rennie, he's probably NOT clueless (if you have a look at AUS UAV website), and he managed to get the gig with a Federal Government organisation. There are plenty of examples of DJI products being used above polar latitudes in ATTI mode - as close to manual as you can get (try explaining ATTI mode to the media) - and one guy I spoke to who flew his I1 from a cruise ship, with compass calibration in P mode on the Antarctic Peninsula. And Tups in the post above...