Attempting to track a UAV- With the M3T

Yesterday afternoon, just as the sun was starting to set, I decided to head on out and get some flight time in with my Mavic 3T. My partner was sat with me as my spotter and I was showing her the M3T's impressive zoom by looking at the ArcelorMittal Orbit, better known as the "helter-skelter", in London.

I focused on logging more hours and mastering the thermal colour palettes. Suddenly, my partner's voice loudened, saying, "Is that your drone?" A rush of confusion washed over me as I heard the whir of propellers quickly growing louder. Anxiety & dread hit as I immediately thought my drone was plummeting from the sky due to some sort of disconnection. I quickly checked my altitude on the OSD, the live feed showed me still at 320 feet, the screen hadn't frozen and the signal was strong. The fear of an very expensive malfunction passed as I realised it wasn't my drone a few feet above us— it was another pilot's flying nearby.

As the video starts, you'll see me zoomed in looking at the helter-skelter. A few seconds later is when I get the alert of "Is that your drone?!" dread ensues, eventually subsides.. and I had the thought of- "Well, I posted a video about a russian M3T tracking a Ukrainian M3 back to it's base the other day, can I do that?"

In my defence for the shocking swinging of the camera.. 1) I didn't know I was about to be tracking a drone. 2) My cameras weren't set up on the right and I wasted time remembering where all the camera buttons were. 3) my gimbal expos were too high. - Right excuses out the way, haha!

I briefly caught a glimpse of the drone on the vis camera, as it was flying near the footbridge. I immediately lost it as I was already swinging the gimbal but then managed to spot it on the thermal as a tiny orange dot flying down the screen. Once It went out my view, I swung the M3T around and tried to guess it's flight trajectory. Luckily I was close and the vis cam caught it again. More terrible tracking ensues but I eventually see the pilot far off with his friend holding his remote. I ended the video there and returned home, mostly because I was embarrassed at the amount of swing I managed to create and because of the fact It was absolutely freezing!

So, is it hard? - well yeah, for someone who's not gone out with the intent of finding and intercepting another drone, I'd say it's dam tricky! But, if you were an experienced operator, who's part of a counter drone team assigned to searching and destroying enemy drones, I think using the M3T would make the job fairly straightforward.

A few factors to consider. It was about 17:40, the sun had been shining all day warming the ground up, so initially I hard a hard time on the thermal distinguishing if a heat emission was natural or from the drone. I only manged to pick the drone up when It was moving and stuck out. As I didn't have time to mess around with the zoom on the thermal cam, I fairly quickly lost it among all the other environmental heat emissions.

This minutes worth of event helped me quite a lot, project "BlackCat" involves the use of UAV's and detection techniques so it gave me first hand experience of trying to target and track an "enemy" drone. I've got a lot to consider and even more to trial with. Wish me luck!

If you've read this far, I just want to say thank you - your time means a lot to me. All the best! Curtis C