Intro
During this field outing my group was selected to go first. My group had recently established our own checklist that breaks down the checklist into four flight roles. Our checklist had a designated Pilot-in-command, two Flight engineers, and one surveillance operator. As the groups PIC I was responsible for mission planning, managing the Com Box, measuring weather, and communicating with the sensor operator who also acted as the checklist manager. While the two Flight engineers and the sensor operator ran through the checklist for catapult setup, I gathered the weather data and began setting up the ground station. As I completed each stage, I confirmed its completion with our sensor operator. Once we reached the stage of trying to connect the aircraft to the GCS tablet and connecting the tablet to the Com Box we reached our issue. The Com Box battery had failed and the flight was unable to proceed.
Operation Environment
The Operation Area was the Martell forest which provided the flight crew many advantages and possible hazards. The advantages of the location were: a large open area, lines of short grass, and tree line that blocked low level winds. The hazards of the location were: line of cars parked alongside road, tree lines presents many obstacles, and poles displaced through the fields. Separate from the location was the affects of weather on the mission. There was a very slight northern wind but the winds were mostly calm so we decided to setup the catpult facing east away from the tree line. The sky was completely clear of clear of clouds or any precipitation and therefore it did not play a factor in mission planning or actual flight. The temperature was 10.3 Degrees Centigrade which is well within the aircrafts operating limitations but likely affected the battery duration of the Com Box
Takeaways
The mission was a failure but failure is often the best teacher. This lab taught the lesson of "trust but verify". For any aviation operation to work efficiency there must be trust but the second step is just as vital. If any person had verified the battery's condition before traveling to the site or prior to setup it is possible the failure could have been circumvented.
