Do you recommend a particular training service for Part 107?
If you have to do this 10 times a drone might be perfect. One thing to consider is weather. An ongoing drone project we set ground control for proved interesting for the drone operator. It was a site in a very windy part of the country. The last time we worked on it he took three trips down to it before he could fly the drone. It is a 300 mile round trip. Not too big a deal at 80mph but still ......
I work for an old school aerial firm. Starting to see a lot of folks attempting 1000's of acres with a UAV, IMO, wrong tool. Same with your proposed project if it is huge, an UAV may be wrong tool, old school aerial mappers having been doing sites for volumes for decades and may be a good choice. We have more expensive gear, BUT time on site, number of flight lines/images is substantially reduced and we can cover multiple sites on a shred acquisition day many times, thus making acquisition/processing much less than a UAV. UAV's have uses, but no way is 1300 or 6000 acres projects a good use and I have run into both of those size of projects this week alone with folks thinking a UAV was way to go. The 6000 acres one was a UAV LiDAR project and they are actually doing it with a UAV.
SHG
@jmfleming Watch your line of sight with scanning total stations.?ÿ This bit us on a recent stockpile survey because we couldn't see to the bottom in many areas and there was no way to access the necessary areas by foot.?ÿ With a drone you won't have those issues.
I don't like to fly areas larger than 100 acres. Although I have flown 400 acres for 2d ortho only at 400ft AGL. For 3d I fly at 160 to 180ft AGL. Just got an email to compute a volume on a topsoil pile I fly a few weeks ago. This is only 6 acres, RTK drone flight at double grid is less than 10 minutes.
I got the cost of a flight from an old school company for a recent project I set control out for: $20k. It was easily $200k for what I've seen from drone operators. No way could they have done such a big area for $20k. From what I've seen the $200k may have been pushing it. But some ongoing small stockpiles. Sounds like a drone would work for that.?ÿ
@mightymoe I don't know, you might be surprised, the size of the aerial platform and sensor sometimes doesn't seem to be proportional to the cost... In fact the small UAV on larger projects is going to be a ton more work, and while UAV's are much closer to the subject being mapped and can get more detail (maybe) they also have a lot more acquisition time and stitching all the smaller images or LiDAR swaths together starts to cause some issues with accuracy on huge projects.
We just contracted to map about 4400 acres (seven square miles) in another state 650 miles from our hangar facility. 8 ppm LiDAR, 19 flight lines with total length of 55 miles and estimated 1.5 hours of on site acquisition plus ferry time. Worst case an overnight stay for the flight crew. Ground control will be a firm local to the project site.
Depending on site size of course and a few other factors, we have been competitive on projects up to 1500 miles away, people don't think to ask because they don't believe there is any way that could be true.
SHG
I've worked with old school companies for 43 years now. I'm way more onboard with them than drones.?ÿ
They are cheap compared to what I've see from the few drone projects I've been involved with. They need more orginazition.?ÿ
