Packing for the Bush

I had to sort through how to pack all the UAS components in a way that facilitated relatively easy transport, but also allowed for very quick forward deplopyment. The goal was a system that could be airborne within 5mins of arrival at any location. Step one was a smaller, more portable ground station. Here's V2.0 of the GCS:

Now, smaller, easier to carry, and designed in a water proof Pelican case.

Note the checklist to the right, now used before and during every flight, which was developed over several months of flight testing (i.e. anytime something nearly, or actually resulted in an incident or accident, the checklist was updated :) ).

Packing the UAV required some trade-offs. If the landing skids are disasembled, the whole UAV can fit in the single fairly small silver case to the right of this photo, but would take 15 mins to deploy (and introduce risk as it might be easy to miss a bolt while assembling in the field. I opted to use two cases for transporting the UAV:

The case in the right of this photo is an OEM design that can hold the complete UAV if the landing skids are disassembled

The top section of the UAV is packed in the OEM case. The landing skids are packed, completely assembled with one of three mission gimbal/camera combinations in the left case.

The UAV can be assembled, and completely pre-flighted, along with the GCS in under 5 mins.

 Batteries and associated peripherals got there own case for safety reasons. This case holds enough batteries for upwards of 3 hours of flight time!

The handheld controllers also have a dedicated case (along with room for spare cameras, lenses, etc)