Grand Sky gets financial OK for new UAS weather system

The President of Grand Sky says the Grand Forks  UAS company wants a more precise system of predicting the weather than what’s currently available.

Tom Swoyer says general, commercial and military aviation have fine weather programs, but there needs to be another “level of granularity” to support  unmanned operations.

“(You) can’t really see what’s going on in the sky around you,” Swoyer said. “You can’t really detect things like turbulence and stuff. Maybe there are some sensors on the plane that give you that feedback, but for the most part, you’re flying an aircraft into that. So really understanding the weather picture is crucial for continued, long-distance unmanned aircraft flights.”

Swoyer says a weather-specific drone from a Swiss company would be used by Grand Sky to get info that may not otherwise be available. 

“It will launch and fly up to 16,900 feet, collecting six different weather data points, from temperature to winds aloft to known icing conditions to barometric pressure – a variety of different data points that it will collect on its way up and on its way down.”

More than $718,000 will be devoted to the system. That money, from a state legislative appropriation, was recently approved through the Grand Forks County Commission.