Dusty Bin flies in Japan
A team from Honeywell have been the latest to fly sUAS over the stricken plant at Fukushima Daiichi. Its a little surprising that more has not been made of the Yamaha RMAX fleet of robotic helicopters that Japan is famous for.
Instead international teams from France and now the USA have been called in.
The Wall Street Journal carried comments from the Honeywell team in Japan.
T-Hawks and their human partners faced unique technical and environmental challenges in Japan. The challenges included operating the vehicles from a portable, radiation-protected container large enough for several people—and transported on a flatbed truck. The crews also had to wear full-body radiation protective gear, layers of heavy gloves and personal respirators.
Rain and heavy winds prevented the vehicles from getting airborne on some days, Jeff Lumpkin, a Honeywell pilot on the Fukushima project, said in an interview last week. Mr. Lumpkin and Lindsay Ballard, a Honeywell instructor pilot who also was there, said the T-Hawks didn’t have any maintenance problems and weren’t affected by high radiation levels. Two of the vehicles flew, with two units as back-up.
Brad Welch, the senior member of the Honeywell team who previously spent more than a year in Afghanistan, said plans called for all four T-Hawks to remain indefinitely in Japan, largely because of the uncertainties stemming from their exposure to high levels of radiation.
Honeywell officials said they are contractually barred from talking about exactly which portions of the plant the vehicles surveyed, but Japanese news reports have indicated T-Hawks were used to check the condition of all four of the crippled reactors.
