When military pilots fly drones, they sit inside metal boxes thousands of miles away from where the drone actually is. When hobbyists recreational quadcopters or fixed-wing aircraft, they stand, exposed, usually a few hundred feet away from whatever they're piloting. But that's starting to change: A few hobbyists around the country are building mobile drone command centers that lets them pretend as though they're in a real plane.
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While the military need for command centers is obvious—they're flying massive Predators and Global Hawks that can stay airborne for hours and have huge ranges—the hobby use of trailers and virtual cockpits seems to be primarily for the cool factor, for the time being.
The key to making one of these things work is a technology known as first person view flight—basically, a front-facing camera is attached to the drone, and it constantly streams video of what it sees back to its operator, allowing them to pilot it for miles from where they're actually standing, limited only by battery life (and, in the past, the range of the controller). In most cases, the video is streamed back to an iPad or a pair of goggles.But there's no reason why you couldn't stream the video back to a giant television, and then put that giant television inside a makeshift cockpit or trailer or something like that.And that's exactly what people are starting to do.
Estes inside the "flight end" of his fortress. Image: Robert Estes
A couple years ago, a hobbyist named Brett Hayes created what looks like a doghouse but is actually a drone cockpit—inside its wooden housing, there's various gauges, joysticks, pedals, and switches to flip, all of which control something on his drone. The cockpit can be pulled around by a truck, and a drone can fly a couple miles from the ground station.Since then, others have followed suit: A former US Navy sailor who goes by Airtruksrus online says he built a similar mobile ground station because he "got bored of watching the planes from the sidelines. I found this to be much cheaper than the full scale [manned aircraft]."
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While most mobile command centers are fairly gimmicky (while still being completely awesome), down in southern Mississippi, it looks like Robert Estes has built something a little different.
His trailer isn't quite a cockpit—it looks more like those military drone command centers you'd see on an Air Force Base. He's got a 20-foot-long, 8-foot wide, carbon fiber-reinforced trailer that he says "takes a one and a half ton truck to pull it." It has a series of 32-inch televisions in there and he can launch roughly a dozen drones—some outfitted with infrared cameras—out of it."There's nothing like it in the world," he told me. "No one has ever seen a command station like what I built. It's state of the art. It took me three years to build."If you're wondering why anyone would need a carbon fiber-protected mobile drone command center, you're not alone. WMC Action News 5 in Mississippi ran a bewildered piece last week wondering what he's doing with the thing. The piece implied that he's set up a drone "neighborhood watch," but Estes says that isn't his goal. He says he can help out the local cops or take it on the road and fly anywhere—he sees it as the next evolution of the hobby."I can go anywhere in the country and fly if it's raining outside, if it's snowing," he said. "Believe it or not, this is what society is going to want in a few years. The authorities are going to start wanting to use these things on their own instead of just standing outside holding a radio."
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The key to making one of these things work is a technology known as first person view flight—basically, a front-facing camera is attached to the drone, and it constantly streams video of what it sees back to its operator, allowing them to pilot it for miles from where they're actually standing, limited only by battery life (and, in the past, the range of the controller). In most cases, the video is streamed back to an iPad or a pair of goggles.But there's no reason why you couldn't stream the video back to a giant television, and then put that giant television inside a makeshift cockpit or trailer or something like that.And that's exactly what people are starting to do.
His trailer isn't quite a cockpit—it looks more like those military drone command centers you'd see on an Air Force Base. He's got a 20-foot-long, 8-foot wide, carbon fiber-reinforced trailer that he says "takes a one and a half ton truck to pull it." It has a series of 32-inch televisions in there and he can launch roughly a dozen drones—some outfitted with infrared cameras—out of it."There's nothing like it in the world," he told me. "No one has ever seen a command station like what I built. It's state of the art. It took me three years to build."If you're wondering why anyone would need a carbon fiber-protected mobile drone command center, you're not alone. WMC Action News 5 in Mississippi ran a bewildered piece last week wondering what he's doing with the thing. The piece implied that he's set up a drone "neighborhood watch," but Estes says that isn't his goal. He says he can help out the local cops or take it on the road and fly anywhere—he sees it as the next evolution of the hobby."I can go anywhere in the country and fly if it's raining outside, if it's snowing," he said. "Believe it or not, this is what society is going to want in a few years. The authorities are going to start wanting to use these things on their own instead of just standing outside holding a radio."
On that, he's right: A couple military contractors and police suppliers have begun selling mobile command stations (that appear less military-like than Estes'). Hobby companies have begun trying to cater to FPV enthusiasts who want to fly very long ranges by selling 4G-LTE cards, theoretically extending the range of run-of-the-mill consumer drones to thousands of miles (assuming you have someone to set up and charge the drone halfway across the country or the world).Of course, much of this is in quasi-legal territory at the moment: The Federal Aviation Administration's latest legal interpretation (which appears unlikely to hold up in court) makes remote FPV flying completely illegal. Having a mobile command center is also certainly on the fringes of the hobby—I've only seen a couple that have been made, so it's unclear whether the masses will get behind people like Estes.In any case, Estes says he's going to keep flying his."I just like to do it, it's my passion," he said. "I just like to mess around with them, I've been doing this kind of stuff for 30 years now, man."