Impressed Flight IF800 Tomcat + Sentera 65R Evaluation

Adam has spent his profession exploring the pure and human world from above utilizing drones, satellites, and mapping instruments. His firm Crossbill Geospatial gives knowledge and session on all issues geospatial. Join with him on Linkedin and at his web site.

I’ve flown lots of the enterprise drones available on the market to create maps and knowledge for distant sensing evaluation. When Impressed Flight reached out and supplied me a demo unit of their medium raise IF800 Tomcat to evaluate on behalf of The Drone Lady I cleared my schedule. I wished to find out if this technique meets the necessities of a high-output geospatial agency.

Impressed Flight Applied sciences is an American drone firm headquartered in San Luis Obispo, California. For U.S.-based drone pilots, that makes Impressed Flight all of the extra compelling given the latest FCC ban on future, foreign-made drones. Moreover, the IF800 meets NDAA and Blue UAS necessities, which is one other key promoting level.

The Impressed Flight IF800 Tomcat drone begins at about $30,000, not together with the payload.

Getting began flying the IF800 Tomcat 

In preparation to fly this platform, I took a 90-minute coaching from IF employees who made positive I had every part I wanted to achieve success and have been very useful in answering all my questions. I additionally discovered the offered guidelines have been complete and made positive I didn’t should troubleshoot something to be able to get off the bottom. 

The IF800 Tomcat is, by all accounts, an enormous platform. It arrives in a considerable case the place the platform sits the wrong way up, requiring the attachment of touchdown gear earlier than flight. For these used to the folding arms of a DJI M300, the IF800 ought to really feel acquainted. It options 4 strong rotors, built-in strobe lights for visibility, and an FPV digicam for pilot orientation.

The quantity of area wanted for all this tools will come as no shock to field-going professionals, however is value mentioning as cargo area might must be deliberate for. Proven listed below are the Sentera 65R, RTK module, platform/GCS case, touchdown pad, and battery case.

The Floor Management Station

The Floor Management Station (GCS) is equally substantial. It’s a giant, rugged unit working a personalized wrapper of QGroundControl (QGC) mission planning software program. Whereas the scale and weight may be a shock at first, the big display dimension is welcome given the detailed person interface throughout flights.

The controller permits you to use both the inner battery or a replaceable exterior battery on the again, providing you with the choice for seamless hot-swapping. That is key for enterprise customers in making certain the GCS by no means dies throughout an extended day of back-to-back missions.

The platform stories on two separate GPS models, which doubtless accounts for the spectacular geo-referencing accuracy noticed even when flying with out energetic RTK corrections. In my assessments, I normally had at the very least 30 satellites for every GPS when flying. 

Associated learn: American drone maker launches NDAA compliant drone with 40-minute flight time

Batteries and flight time

The plane batteries are giant, heavy models that should be powered on earlier than they’re clipped into the platform. They’re scorching swappable, that means the plane can keep on throughout battery swaps. I discovered I constantly obtained at the very least half-hour of flight time (whereas touchdown at 30%) whereas flying within the 4,500ft elevation foothills of Utah throughout winter. Flying at totally different elevations, temperatures, and with different payloads will have an effect on flight instances. 

My payload: the Sentera 65R

The IF800 Tomcat pairs with quite a lot of payloads, together with EO/IR, optical, and LiDAR sensors. I selected to fly it with the Sentera 65R due to the excessive decision knowledge it could actually produce and to check the claims of it being a really perfect mapping digicam.

I used to be capable of interview Matt Skelton who’s a Product Advertising and marketing Supervisor at John Deere, which owns Sentera, in regards to the 65R. He defined that the digicam is tuned particularly for vegetation and scientific accuracy and favors a scientific output. By minimizing the inner picture processing similar to digital sharpening and color-grading, Sentera ensures the information is a extra genuine illustration of the bottom which is essential for repeatable educational or industrial analysis.

The 65R is a 65 megapixel RGB (RGB stands for Pink-Inexperienced-Blue, that means it solely captures inside the seen spectrum) digicam with an built-in 500gb strong state laborious drive that enables for a surprising 3 picture captures per second.

It’s mounted to the platform by using Freefly’s sensible dovetail design which permits for environment friendly and simple payload swaps.

I wouldn’t take into account the Sentera 65R a jack-of-all-trades digicam. It accomplishes surveying, mapping, and analytics capabilities extraordinarily nicely, however in case you are seeking to carry out infrastructure inspections or shoot cinematic 4K video, I might have a look at different choices. This sensor was purpose-built for photogrammetry and vegetation evaluation.

The 65R’s hidden jewel is the worldwide shutter. On this planet of high-resolution aerial mapping, the choice rolling shutters can introduce picture distortions that destroy sub-centimeter accuracy and might confound photogrammetry software program. The 65R world shutter has no such points, permitting for quicker flight speeds with out sacrificing readability.

Drawbacks value contemplating

My main ache level? You possibly can’t alter the main focus, shutter velocity, ISO, or aperture of the photographs being taken. Whereas I personally favor to have management over these settings, ultimately I needed to belief the sensor to do its job.

Skelton later instructed me you could management digicam settings earlier than flights through a related internet interface with the digicam. With that, I concluded that I may tolerate the digicam managing the picture seize settings independently, because it carried out remarkably nicely. Nonetheless, for customers on the lookout for extra management, Skelton stated that an in-app adjustment characteristic is deliberate for the 2026 roadmap. 

And for what it’s value,  the outcomes have been laborious to argue with. I examined the 65R in high-contrast daylight and flat, cloudy situations. In each occasion, the auto-exposure was spot on and the digicam switched parameters and tailored at the same time as lighting situations modified all through survey flights. All my photographs have been sharp and nicely targeted with no enter from me. 

A cropped picture from a 65R picture taken at 80m AGL. Some horses chewing on grass whose blades you may just about depend.

The 65R workflow

Maybe essentially the most important departure from a standard workflow is the 65R’s use of inside Stable State Drive (SSD) storage quite than detachable SD playing cards. The digicam captures knowledge so quickly (as much as 3 each second) that an SD card merely can’t sustain with the write speeds required for a 65MP sensor.

From a sure perspective this creates a slight dilemma within the area which requires considered one of two approaches:

• The “Fly All Day” Method: The digicam has a half-terabyte of storage. You possibly can fly all day (or all week) with out worrying about area, monitoring the storage stage through an icon within the GCS.
• The “QC as You Go” Method: For these of us who’ve needed to refly tasks as a result of we have now been burned by a corrupted card or a blurry lens up to now, we prefer to verify knowledge between flights (like a painful expertise with a scorching range, you solely must study that lesson as soon as).

As a result of the media isn’t detachable, checking the information means plugging all the drone (or the digicam through an AC adapter) right into a laptop computer.

Whereas switch speeds are spectacular ( roughly 130 MB/s on Home windows and doubtlessly quicker on Mac), it’s nonetheless a course of that requires the drone to be grounded. To optimize effectivity, I counsel adopting an F1-style pit cease technique.

By designating a selected crew member to be prepared with a laptop computer and laborious drive the second the drone touches down, you may facilitate real-time knowledge backups throughout battery swaps and flight plan uploads. This coordinated method permits a pilot and observer to take care of almost steady flight operations all through the day. For area backups, using high-quality USB-C cables is right; my testing confirmed that 8GB of information could possibly be transferred in underneath two minutes.

Backing up knowledge isn’t so simple as copying knowledge off of an SD card. 

Whereas the tools is definitely spectacular, I prefer to remind those that the information being collected is the entire objective of those instruments. I processed the 65R knowledge utilizing Agisoft Metashape, and the outcomes have been clear and sharp.

Typically, drone lenses produce a “fish-bowl” distortion on the edges of a 3D mannequin, but in my assessments the ensuing elevation mannequin and orthomosaics had no bowing. I might attribute that to the worldwide shutter, low lens distortion and excessive GPS alignment between pictures. The purpose clouds and Digital Elevation Fashions (DEMs) have been extremely sharp as nicely. 

Listed below are the anticipated floor pattern distances you may anticipate from totally different flying heights in line with the Sentera on-line calculator:  

I used to be capable of replicate these resolutions in my take a look at flights. As you may see from the desk, the bottom decision flying underneath Half 107 you’re going to get from the 65R is a pixel representing a 1.4cm sq. on the bottom. That’s simply in regards to the dimension of one of many keys on the keyboard in entrance of you. Not dangerous!

An instance of the excessive decision imagery from the 65R, with a Pilot-in-Command, and his two youngsters ‘working’ as Visible Observers in a parking zone

Even with out the RTK/PPK module absolutely engaged, the information lined up with real-world coordinates with shocking accuracy, doubtless because of the high-quality GPS redundancy on the IF800.

IF800: Who is that this drone for?

For mapping professionals who must cowl giant acreage with high-resolution, scientifically correct knowledge, and who must do it inside a safe, NDAA-compliant framework, this is without doubt one of the prime platforms and digicam mixtures available on the market. The upcoming 2026 updates, which Matt Skelton promised will embody 12-bit RAW seize and built-in digicam controls inside the GCS, will solely make this technique extra formidable.

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