High Expectations

Flying inside a facility that grows marijuana

- Patrick Sherman

IT’S HARDLY A SECRET THAT PRECISION agriculture is one of the biggest potential markets for drones, so I wasn’t surprised when a marketing firm contacted the Roswell Flight Test Crew, asking if we could help demonstrate some new technology used to monitor crop health. After initially thinking about how to mount an external sensor on one of my drones, we learned that all the sensors were on the ground; our job was simply to show them off with aerial video. Then we learned that the crop was growing indoors—and I had a hunch that it wasn’t going to be poinsettias.

Marijuana has been legal for recreational use in Oregon since 2014, and it has been available by prescription since 1998. Having never partaken myself, this has always been an interesting point of trivia to me but nothing more. I was now going to get up close and personal with my home state’s most famous cash crop.

Green System

The initial word from our contact at the marketing firm, which was putting together a trade ­show video for the sensor company, was that the crop was inside a warehouse. Having flown inside warehouses before, I was unconcerned. GPS reception might be problematic, so I planned on flying in Attitude mode or its equivalent, but I figured the high ceilings would give me ample room to maneuver.