<< >> NASA ASRS Report 1537607, April 2018

The pilot of an MQ9 unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) reported that; while conducting a tactical mission; he had to abandon his control station during a thunderstorm; leaving the drone without a pilot at the controls for approximately one hour.

Attributes
ACN	1537607
Time
Date	201804
Local Time Of Day	1801-2400
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.ARTCC
State Reference	US
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	UAV - Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Cruise
Route In Use	None
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Commercial Flight Crew Instrument
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 50 Flight Crew Total 2000
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Deviation - Procedural FAR Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence

Narrative:

MQ9 drone aircraft was on patrol in ZZZ valley. Thunderstorms were approaching the ground control station. The decision was made to evacuate the ground control station until the thunderstorms passed instead of returning the aircraft to the airport for landing. The MQ9 aircraft was without a pilot at the controls for approximately one hour. The mission was continued after the ground control station was re-manned despite the fact that there were numerous thunderstorms in the area.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: The pilot of an MQ9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) reported that; while conducting a tactical mission; he had to abandon his control station during a thunderstorm; leaving the drone without a pilot at the controls for approximately one hour.

Narrative: MQ9 drone aircraft was on patrol in ZZZ valley. Thunderstorms were approaching the ground control station. The decision was made to evacuate the ground control station until the thunderstorms passed instead of returning the aircraft to the airport for landing. The MQ9 aircraft was without a pilot at the controls for approximately one hour. The mission was continued after the ground control station was re-manned despite the fact that there were numerous thunderstorms in the area.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.