Bracken Systems

Bracken Systems LLC

Iterating to Success

Unmanned aircraft built, tuned, tested and flown, and the hardware and software that make them usable.

Capabilities

Continuity across the aircraft, the payload, the ground system and the event it flies in. Scoped work, not a staffing body.

Design, Test, Fly

Aircraft from requirement to flying hardware: airframe, propulsion and power, autopilot integration, control and video links. Tuned against measured behavior. The build and test rhythm is aggressive on purpose, which is what condenses the timeline: a change is flown, judged and revised inside the same week instead of waiting on the next review cycle.

Secure Server Architecture and Custom Applications

Self hosted services a client can operate and rebuild. Identity gated access, full certificate chains, overlay networking, and a runbook with the credential rotation procedure in it. Tactical C2 plumbing and TAK server deployments sit on the same foundation, as do custom web applications built to order.

Payload Development

Getting a payload onto an aircraft and making it work. Electro optical and thermal imaging, stabilized video to the operator, rangefinding and air data. Custom RF payloads, and dropper and dispenser stores built to the mission rather than picked from a catalog.

3D Printing

Mounts, cradles, enclosures, fixtures and carry hardware, made here. Geometry is written as parametric code rather than clicked in a CAD seat, so a dimension is an edit and a re-run instead of a redraw, and a family of sizes costs no more than one. Parts are checked against the mating hardware before they fly, and a revision lands in hours.

Red Air

Threat presentation for training and test, flown by the person who built the aircraft. A profile that needs to change between passes changes between passes, and an airframe that breaks gets fixed on the range instead of ending the period. Autonomous profiles are there when repeatability matters more than reaction.

Event Wrangling

Training events, demonstrations and test periods run end to end. Scheduling, airspace and range coordination, safety and contingency planning, after action. For programs standing up an operator qualification, the syllabus gets written, taught and evaluated against by the same person.

Multirotor in flight releasing a store from a servo dropper. Ducted multirotor with a gimballed camera and a light module. Night view downlinked from the aircraft with the flight overlay across it.

Applications

Tools I built for my own flying, available to clients.

Link margin coverage map over hillshaded terrain, with the planned route and the segments below required margin in red.

Preflight

Live

Mission planning. Weather, illumination, terrain masking and the link margin every radio actually has over real elevation data, as a brief with the number behind each call.

Result tiles from a flight log, the Tune and filters group: rate tracking, the rate controller's terms, AutoTune readiness, the harmonic notch and the gyro spectrum.

Postflight

Live

Log analysis. The flight against the plan, the failsafe, the link, and the measured figures that go back into the aircraft and into the next plan.

Access is by arrangement. Signing in asks for your email and sends a one-time code; if no code arrives within a minute, you are not on the list yet. Email info@brackensystems.com and say what you fly.

About

Joe Fernandez.

Joe Fernandez

Active duty SOF. Bracken is my side hustle for now, run on my own time and with my own equipment.

linkedin.com/in/joekfernandez

Contact

Independent contractor, scoped work. Tell me the mission and the constraint.

info@brackensystems.com