Jersey 999 Aerial Recon Team

Always happy to assist our colleagues with aerial searches.

Incident update 2215

Following a report that a person was sighted at La Rocco tower earlier this evening, an extensive search of the tower has now been made by the SoJ Fire Service drone fitted with night vision capabilities. No further sightings have been observed and we have stood the crews down.

Many thanks to our colleagues at the Fire and Rescue service and to the public for the hundreds of shares and thousands of views of our social media post in such a short space of time. It is very much appreciated.

Please remember there’s no drone flying this evening!! Let’s keep the skies clear and safe for the big man!

Very Very Important Notice to Aviators.

A No Flying Order has now been issued for the airspace around North Pole Airport . This will remain in place until 6am Monday morning.

The Order has been put in place to allow for the Safe departure of Santa's sleigh tonight & its subsequent return once overnight delivery operations are complete. Your cooperation is appreciated.

Meanwhile SOJP Operational Teams will be deployed overnight to ensure Santa's passage through the Island goes according to plan.

Merry Christmas.

Three week’s ago today we lost a team member!

Our small team is so terribly shocked and saddened at the sudden loss of Firefighter Avanos Biney. He will leave a huge hole in our team and will be sorely missed by us all.

Our thoughts are with Avanos’ family, friends and colleagues at this terribly sad time.

RIP Avanos!

We’ve taken delivery of our new drone!

The DJI Matrice 210 will bring a much improved emergency response capability for the Island.

The key benefits of this new asset are that it carries both a thermal and HD zoom camera at the same time enabling the operators to flick between images making searches and operations far more efficient, it has an extended flying time and safety feature due to carrying 2 batteries, a new zoom camera with 30x optical zoom and 6x digital zoom, and most importantly gives us the ability to fly when wet!

We will now begin a period of familiarisation, testing and training with the new drone prior to it becoming fully operational!

Here’s some maintenance tips for DJI drone users.

Safe flying 😊

Drone Maintenance Checklist These tips for drone maintenance will help you keep your drone in tip-top condition. All drone pilots will benefit from following these safety tips.

Please remember that there is a ban on drone flying today between 1pm-6pm!

Only commercial pilots with permission from ATC allowed to fly!

This morning we once again assisted the Environment Dept in their mission to locate Asian Hornets.

Our task was to fly alongside the nest to check if the sound of the drone would again attract the hornets.

On this occasion it did not and the hornets showed no interest in our drone!

This was disappointing as it meant that the drone could not be relied upon as a tool to help locate further nests.

Attached is an image that shows the nest in the tree and how difficult they are to spot. This tree was in someone's back garden, so if you haven't checked already it would help the Environment Dept if you could and report any potential nests on 441600

There has been a video clip of a drone hitting the wing tip of an aircraft leaving New York doing the rounds on social media for some time now!

Had us fooled initially, but we can confirm it is a fake and was put together by an amazing special effects company!!!

Here's the proof!

Drone Collision (Composite Breakdown) More background info at http://www.branit.com/branit-blog/2015/6/23/drone-hits-airliner

**IMPORTANT NOTICE**

Next week is the Jersey International Air Display and to ensure safety of the display aircraft it will be an offence to fly drones between the following times:

Weds 13 Sept- 1-6 pm
Thurs 14 Sept- 12-6 pm

This is for the whole of Jersey including up to 3 miles offshore!

Holders of Permits for Aerial Work may still be able to operate subject to permission from Air Traffic Control!

Please obey this order and keep the skies safe for the display aircraft!

Our Asian Hornet encounter has even made it to the Daily Mirror 😳🐝😁

Drone loses battle with Asian hornets after being sent to scout out nest The aggressive insects, which can kill humans, almost downed the £4,000 aircraft by swarming its propellers amid an alarming invasion that threatens to overrun one of the Channel Islands