The Scout 137 Gen 3 tether is 60 metres long. The drone can work anywhere the tether reaches from the ground station, for as long as the job takes: there is no battery to run down and no radio link to lose.
This question came from an attendee at one of our Live Online Demos.
What 60 metres means in practice
The tether runs from the ground station to the drone, and the drone carries the weight of whatever tether is out. So 60 m is the furthest the drone can be from the ground station, measured along the cable:
- Straight up: with the full tether out, the drone hangs above the station at up to 60 m height, carrying 1.11 kg of tether (18.5 g/m).
- With the UTM Payload: the drone can lift at most 35 m of tether, so plan thickness work within 35 m of the station.
- Inside a tank or a mine: the cable follows the drone’s path through hatches, around frames and along drifts, and every bend uses some of the 60 m. Where you place the ground station decides what one setup can cover.
The Tether Deployment System (TDS) deploys and recovers the drone on the tether itself, so every flight starts and ends with a controlled launch and retrieval. Because the tether is the power supply, flight time is effectively unlimited: you work to the inspection, not to a battery clock.
Wind
Indoors, wind is rarely the limit. Outdoors it is, because the drone carries its own tether and more tether out means less margin. We cover that in Can the Scout 137 be used outdoors, and how does wind affect it?, including an interactive tether and wind simulator.
Data security: a cable, not a radio link
The same tether carries the data. Video, LiDAR and measurements travel over a physical cable using power-line communication, at 80 Mbit/s. There are no RF transmitters and no GPS receivers on the drone: nothing to intercept, jam or spoof. Read more in Scout 137 data security: a fully wired path from capture to cloud.
The tether in numbers
- Length 60 m, weight 18.5 g/m
- 400 V DC power, 80 Mbit/s data
- 80 kg breaking strength
- Kevlar-reinforced, PVC outer and FRP inner
Proof
On a large FPSO, TDBR found the tethered system indispensable because of its unlimited flight time, with large parts of the job flown beyond visual line of sight.
Short question? 15 min with an engineer