Wow, you are getting it for how much?

Seeing the same thing here. I think the big guys are feeling the price competition from the new UAV shops, and adapting accordingly.

FrozenNorth, post: 452321, member: 10219 wrote: Seeing the same thing here. I think the big guys are feeling the price competition from the new UAV shops, and adapting accordingly.

Maybe they are trying to keep up, but I would think a drone couldn't come within 10x this price. I worked for a couple of drone projects, they needed so much more ground control than the big boys do anymore.

A couple of years ago (even before the UAV thing really took off ;)) I had three 80 +/- acre urban sites flown for a consultant who was working with GSA evaluating a potential new site for the FBI headquarters. $12,000 total - and that included dealing with homeland security because all three site required waivers to fly in restricted airspace.

James Fleming, post: 452431, member: 136 wrote: A couple of years ago (even before the UAV thing really took off ;)) I had three 80 +/- acre urban sites flown for a consultant who was working with GSA evaluating a potential new site for the FBI headquarters. $12,000 total - and that included dealing with homeland security because all three site required waivers to fly in restricted airspace.

These were UAV flights?

MightyMoe, post: 452433, member: 700 wrote: These were UAV flights?

Nope conventional fixed wing. I think the big boys "PhotoMetric Spatial" have pretty much automated (and probably outsourced) all the actual mapping

James Fleming, post: 452436, member: 136 wrote: Nope conventional fixed wing. I think the big boys "PhotoMetric Spatial" have pretty much automated (and probably outsourced) all the actual mapping

I chatted a bit with the company doing the mapping for this job, it will be a combo of lidar and compiling, I don't really know what compiling means, I asked him if a guy will be on the bicycle wheel looking through a stereoscope. He chuckled at that, at least he knows I'm not a youngster. 🙂

I work at an aerial mapping company, three fixed wing aircraft, two aerial digital cameras and an aerial LiDAR sensor. While I doubt if we can compete on a city block survey (although a multi block area in an urban area was one project from last week), it doesn't have to be very big before a drone is NOT the right tool. There are probably certain projects where the drone is more suited, but there are also lots of projects being hyped in the survey/mapping rags that are simply being hyped because it is cool to have a drone.

We have NOT adjusted any pricing to compete with a drone, if it is the better tool then we just don't get the project, very rare unless very small project!

While our investment is numerous times what you can tie up in a drone and software, the production is so much ahead they aren't even in the same league. Surprisingly to most folks is the competitiveness of our "old" school tools compared to drone acquisition. I am working on a project right now that is 300 miles one way from our hangar, two lines and 16 exposures that covers approximately 2400 acres (about 1.5 x 2.5 miles in rural area), total time of acquisition for all 16 exposures was about four minutes once reaching the site. This particular project was a single out and back run, so just over four hours of crew time in a fixed wing aircraft, however many times we are able to do several acquisitions in a single run without ever landing with sites separated by up to 100's of miles, different tool, different market than a few acres with a drone and still competitive.

Another site last week was seven exposures, on a single line a bit over 100 miles from the hangar, combined with another acquisition project this day. About 30 seconds to acquire the seven exposures and then head out to the other project. This was for mapping a city park.

Could these projects have been done with a drone? Maybe...

We of course watch what is happening in the mapping world, including drones, but so far very little impact on our historic bread and butter projects, drones may eventually make some impact to our smaller projects, but line of sight rules, requirements for a pilot and observer, thousands of images to cover what a few do with our fixed wing/sensor systems, etc. really make it just something we have decided to NOT pursue at this time and we already have ALL the mapping expertise and staff that could hit the ground running, basically just a lot more smaller images. Will we have drones ever? Probably when it makes sense in our business, that time isn't yet.

SHG