There is often a lot of confusion about what it means to be a professional drone pilot. In this post, we explore the 4 critical steps it takes to become a professional drone pilot.
POB Column: From Drone to Drawing: the Full Workflow
In the conversations we have had with hundreds of land surveyors, civil engineers, and other mapping professionals about starting a drone program, we often see themes arise. One of the most problematic of these is the tendency of businesses to go about the process of setting up a drone program completely backwards. In our most recent column for Point of Beginning, we discuss how to design a drone program with a focus instead on workflow.
POB Column: Can a Drone Make You More Profit?
With dozens of land surveyors, civil engineers, and other mapping professionals using our drone mapping system on a daily basis, we have a great opportunity to learn about all the ways that a drone actually enables bottom-line benefit. In a guest column with Point of Beginning in April, we break down the four primary ways we hear back from our clients that a drone is improving their operations and making them more profitable: efficiency, protection, savings, and communication.
POB Guest Column: To Succeed With Drones, Keep it Simple
If we seem to be repeating ourselves, it's because this is one of the most important things we have learned: the companies that succeed with drone surveying are the ones that start simply. In our February 2017 guest column in Point of Beginning Magazine, we detail what this approach involves and the benefits it offers.
Our Guest Column in Point of Beginning, October
Aerotas was honored when Point of Beginning magazine asked us to follow up our article in the September issue with another in October. In October's guest column, titled "Drone Dos and Don’ts," Aerotas co-founders Logan Campbell and Daniel Katz cover just that: what does a survey drone do well, and what does it not do well? This topic is crucial to understand for surveyors considering starting survey drone operations.
What a Surveyor Needs to Know to Start Mapping by Drone: Making Value from Drone Deliverables
This third in our series of posts expanding on our article in Cal Surveyor covers how the deliverables a mapping drone produces translate into real value for surveyors. We dig into how value comes in the form of increasing crew efficiency, minimizing reliance on aerial contractors, record-collection, and reducing crew risk.
Our Guest Column in Point of Beginning, September
The co-founders of Aerotas were featured as Guest Columnists in this month’s Point of Beginning magazine. The focus of the article is on the critical steps in developing a survey drone program. The article covers the crucial categories of technology (hardware and software), operations, insurance, and regulation. In our experience, operations and workflow management are the most critical but over-looked component in ensuring a successful program.
Surveying by Drone from a Moving Vehicle
Included in the FAA's new drone laws is the ability to operate a drone from within a moving vehicle. This dramatically expands the areas that drones can cover for mapping or inspection. We took to the deserts of Southern California to see how difficult it is to run a safe UAV operation from a moving vehicle.
How to Make Drone Operations Reliable
Last week, I spent a day in the field getting a client trained on their new UAV equipment. Naturally, I thought this would be a great chance to test out a new aircraft that we recently received. Unfortunately, I made a mistake that is all too common in UAV operations: I left all of my batteries sitting in their charger back in the office. Having good operational procedures and good training is the solution to prevent this and worse mistakes. In this post we dig into why following procedures and checklists is crucial on every job.
What a Surveyor Needs to Know to Start Mapping by Drone: The Technology
In our article in California Surveyor Magazine, “What you need to know to determine if UAVs are right for your survey business,” we identify the key factors that land surveyors must consider when deciding whether to begin using survey drones as part of their business. In this post, we will dig in to the first topic that a surveyor needs to understand before deciding whether to start using a drone for aerial mapping: the basic stack of survey drone technology.