• Table of Contents

1. Overview

Teams are assigned an area, grid, or sector. They program a drone to fly a series of parallel flight paths that uniformly cover the entire area. Hand-flying this pattern is not ideal and will lead to inconsistent overlaps, resulting in questionable results.

Parallel Track Flight Patterns may be used during:

1. Mapping missions
2. Visual search of grids during SAR, especially if the search area is large and fairly level, or if only the approximate location of the target is known

<aside> 💡 You may also hear this maneuver called ‘mowing the lawn’ or a ‘sweep search’.

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A team conducting a grid search inside the target area | Image: Civil Air Patrol

2. Choosing Altitudes, Overlaps, Speeds, and Gimbal Angles During Visual Search

This information is covered in: Technical Specifications of Visual Search for Missing Persons Using sUAS.

Drone Deploy; Standard Map Mode; Flown at 200ft AGL; Speed is Slow (10mph) for visual searching Image: Drone Deploy; AZWG

<aside> 💡 When performing visual searches, ignore any warnings from Drone Deploy about Recommended Overlap Settings or speed settings.

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