Complete the Pre-Flight Survey

The Pre-Flight Survey is the desk-based record of the site: who is flying, what airspace sits over it, what is on the ground and what the weather is expected to do. It is the first document in the job’s Ops pack, and it is the only one every operating authorisation requires.

Before you start

The job needs a project location. Without one the tab shows No pre-flight survey yet and the note This job has no project location yet. — set the project’s coordinates first.

Assign the crew and aircraft to the job before you begin. echoMike autofills the survey from those records, and a pilot edit always wins over an autofilled value, so it is quicker to let it fill the boxes and correct the few that are wrong.

Steps

1. Open the job and select Forms

   In the Documents rail, open Ops pack and choose Pre-Flight Survey.

2. Pull the site data

   Select Refresh data. echoMike fetches airspace, NOTAMs, nearby services, terrain, land cover and population figures for the job’s flight areas, then stamps the survey with Data as of and the time. A toast confirms Survey data refreshed.

3. Work through the nine sections

   Operation & operator, Location, Flight crew, Aircraft, Airspace, aerodromes & NOTAM, Operating site observations, People, vehicles & buildings, Environment & emergency and Meteorological report. The rail lists each one with its own filled figure, so you can see which still has blanks.

4. Check the NOTAMs

   The NOTAMs list under the airspace section is populated by the refresh. Mark each one Accepted or Ignored — an untouched one reads Not yet. Use Add NOTAM for anything the feed missed; a manual entry is tagged Manual.

5. Complete both checklists

   Minimum equipment list has 14 items and Remote pilot declaration has 5. Each section header shows its own count as you tick. Both feed the survey’s filled figure, so an untouched equipment list is visible rather than silently ignored.

6. Sign off each section

   Press Sign off in a section header once you are satisfied with it. This is separate from the filled figure — it is your assertion that the section is right, including any field that is legitimately blank.

Options

Choose which flight areas the survey covers

The Flight areas panel lists the job’s areas. Toggle one off with Hide from this preflight survey to keep it out of the geo data and the PDF.

Read the survey as prose

Show all boxes as switches every box between Data and Prose. Draft narrative writes a prose summary from the collected data.

Export it

Export PDF produces the survey as a standalone document. It is also folded into the job’s Ops Pack archive — see Import survey data and export the Ops Pack.

What happens next

The header chip counts the flags the collected data raised, as 2 fail · 1 caution. Work those down before you go to site.

The refresh also writes the geo snapshot that satisfies the PDRA01_SITE_CONDITIONS_CURRENT readiness check. That check covers airspace, NOTAMs and weather together, because all three come from this one capture. It goes stale on a clock rather than on an edit, so a survey filled in last week needs a fresh Refresh data before you fly. Going past the window is advisory — it never stops a flight on its own. An organisation administrator sets the window under Site conditions currency in safety settings.

Troubleshooting

The refresh fails. The toast reads Could not refresh survey data. The geo service is fetched live, so retry; if it persists, fill the airspace and site sections by hand and add NOTAMs manually.

The readiness check still says the survey is incomplete. PDRA01_PREFLIGHT_COMPLETE reads a decision field on the survey, not its filled percentage, and nothing in echoMike currently writes that field. However complete the survey is, the check reports Pre-flight survey has been started but no decision recorded — a Confirm to proceed finding that someone accepts in the clearance dialog rather than one you can clear. See Every readiness check.