128MP Survey Camera, Aloft Expanding to AAM, New Waivers Course, and Black Friday Sale!

Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have three stories for you this week. The first one is that Phase 1 is releasing a 128-megapixel survey camera – it’s huge. Aloft is expanding to AAM, and lastly, our Black Friday sale is live.

128MP Survey Camera

First up, this week is a big one for those in surveying or mapping. Phase One has released a P5 survey payload that weighs around 700 grams, which is a little over a pound. The P5 has an electronic global shutter capable of capturing 4 frames per second at 128 megapixels. It also comes with a 1-gig Ethernet connection, a 14-pin GST Ze connector, and a Mavlink/Auterion connection. There are two different lens options available – 35 mm and 80 mm. With the 35 mm lens, the ground sampling distance at 394 feet, which is 120 meters, is 1.16 cm or 0.45 in. Using the same information and working backwards through the GSD calculator, we estimate that the 80 mm lens from 120 m has a ground sampling distance of 0.51 cm. There’s no pricing at the moment, and I’m sure it’s not cheap, but it is a pretty awesome new camera for those in the surveying field.

Aloft Expands

Next up this week is Aloft expanding to AAM. Aloft, which combines low-altitude monitoring of UAS with AAM traffic, is involved in a project called the North Texas Airspace Awareness Project. This project aims to create a dashboard for low-altitude aircraft operation, specifically around UAS and AAM. The dashboard will enable local municipalities to publish and disseminate localized safety advisories for various users, including governmental, commercial, and recreational. It’s important to note that they are not restricting airspace, but providing information about it. This will allow for a direct connection between the operators of both AAM and UAS and the local government to share information, including local rules. If you’re not familiar, Aloft is the largest U.S. service supplier of LAANC and the current maintainer of the FAA’s Before You Fly app. Aloft provides 80% of all U.S. airspace authorizations. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more about this exciting project.

Black Friday Offering

Last up this week is our New Waivers Course and Black Friday Sale. Our Black Friday sale, which is now live on our website, offers up to 50% off our entire catalog of courses. Our Part 107 is currently $107, the mapping bundle is $199 instead of the usual $299, and our real estate course is $49. These are just a few of the many courses available on our platform. This is the largest sale we do every year, and it’s the only time you’ll find these courses at these prices. We’ve also just released a new course on how to apply for waivers, which is also on sale for Black Friday. The course includes detailed information on the waiver application process, the supporting documents you need, what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wants to know before you submit your waiver, where to submit it, and what to do after you get your waiver. We believe this is one of the best courses we’ve produced, as it breaks down an extremely confusing process into as many simple steps as possible. We think it will help a lot of people with their waivers. So, make sure you head over to PilotInstitute.com for more information and to see all the courses, including our airplane courses, where we’re running a really cool promo.

That’s it for this week. We’ll see you on Monday for the live event. Have a great weekend in the meantime. Try to say our airplane promo without looking at the words.