Naptown Gaijin

DJI Mavic II Pro Dual Enterprise.

olemikey Loc: 6 mile creek, Spacecoast Florida

If you are a Drone "newbie": I fly sport/racing drones, and some (minimal) camera drone stuff. Folks are going to tell you that these expensive pro drones are easy to fly. For the most part this is true. Some get off the ground and have a fine time, but just like real flying, it's not always going to go perfect every flight. Anyone who tells you that is doing you a disservice. In the last couple of years I have repaired some serious drones, where "something" went wrong, and have searched for lost aircraft. I have also heard the near miss stories, and owners of the best drone/quads can tell you about "flyaways", crashes, and fails. If you do not have much/any flight experience, just consider what might happen, be prepard to deal with power failures/electronics failures, loss of signal/control, mechanical failures, and so on. If your GPS nav system fails, it's nice to be able to fly back if lost, rather than a ground search. My $.02

elent

Bang for the buck would probably be DJI Mavic Pro. I still use my Phantom 3's..mostly Pacific shoreline and cliff photography. I stay away from people and populated areas; resulting in zero problems!

tropics68 Loc: Georgia

Fly it over my backyard and I see it you will also need another drone.

alexol

Getting your Part 107 takes about 20 hours study (depending on your background - VERY much less if you have a PPL or anything more advanced) and then a decent drone for the purpose will be at least $1000 plus extra batteries and so on. Flying within 5 miles on an airport or helipad requires FAA clearance. Unless this is something you will enjoy doing, including putting the time and money in, you may be better off seeing what local services are available.

Like many tech things these days, this was a hot lucrative market originally, but as the entry requirements have dropped there is a race to the bottom in terms of pricing.

Having a P107 cert., I was interested in doing this but the changing environment meant that possible income from it wasn't great.

Your circumstances locally may vary hugely of course.

alexol

Clearly someone who has no understanding of the law.

The airspace is controlled by the FAA.

You own your house, but not the air overhead - damaging someone's drone counts the same as damaging someone's aircraft.

If someone was to merely traverse overhead at a reasonable height, it is none of your business and absolutely does not mean you can shoot it down or cause other harm.

This is just the same as if a commercial airliner or medevac helo went overhead.

David Kay Loc: Arlington Heights IL

You shoot the drone and you can bet we wont bring you anything during visiting hours at the jail.

10MPlayer Loc: California

The rules may have changes since I retired from surveying in 2015. We were thinking about incorporating drones in surveying. At that time to fly a drone commercially required a pilots license. A for real pilots license like you need to fly an actual aircraft carrying people. Because of the expense and legal difficulties we decided against it. Things have probably changed in the last 3 1/2 years but you should check with the FAA if you are in the US.

-edit-- So I looked it up and since 2016 you no longer have to be a for real pilot to fly a drone commercially. But you do need a remote pilot license from the government. There are a lot of rules but most of it is common sense. It's supposed to be line of sight only, which would not work too well for a surveyor looking to make a topo map of a 40 acre parcel. If you are doing large parcels it might take several setups to photograph a large piece of land.

10MPlayer Loc: California

We looked into it for surveying and it didn't pencil out. At that time in 2015 a quality drone with a good enough camera for surveying purposes, along with the software to plot out your flights and create 3D data points was leasing for $20,000 a year. To make it work you would have to make two or three times that much to pay for the drone, the office work and the field labor. It was cheaper to hire a traditional aerial photogrammetry outfit to do it.

MidnightManiac

Have a DJI pro drome. Like flying it as a hobby. I am registered but not to do it professionally. That test was quite simple, like 10 questions and the cost was $5.00 To do it professionally you need the part 107 certification. That is not an easy exam. There are sample exams you can get online. The cost is about $150.00 a shot. If you can get your company to pay for it and you have the time to study for it might be worth it. If not stick to your DSLR.

alexol

Bizarrely, VLOS doesn't seem to be held in very high regard. Most of the better drones have about a 5 miles range, and there is no way on god little green earth are you going to be able to see a drone at 5 miles! At least, technically, that is the law. Without lights or strobes it's impossible to see your drone's orientation when it is even (relatively speaking) a short way out, meaning you are dependent on your downlink anyway.

Making topo maps is one of the areas at which drones excel, and can produce maps accurate within inches.

With strobes and so on, there should be no issue going beyond a mile or two, Surveying 2560 acres is one square mile, so a 40 acre parcel can be done - with very high accuracy - quickly and easily.

olemikey Loc: 6 mile creek, Spacecoast Florida

I don't care who you, drone by line of site is tough, even the larger hobby drones are small when you hit 1,000 ft. out and beyond. The larger commercial/agricultural drones would provide some greater visibility, but your going to have to have GPS, and programmed waypoints. VLOS even with field glasses will be tough on a large parcel. To Survey (My brother is a professional Land Surveyor, for a local city), and we have also discussed drones, he works in hundredths of an inch (he admits that is probably overkill in the day of satellites), but that kind of accuracy would still require foot work and a Theodolite. He did not have the budget for it, and once he looked into the technical end, decided it was not mature enough for his operations, and the budget thing was a killer anyway.

Arial photography over a house or small parcel would be OK - on VLOS, but larger areas tougher. Using for larger visuals of an area would be ok too, but if it doesn't have to be a current shot, Google Maps would do fine.

I fly all VLOS (have goggles and table/tripod mounted viewing stations w/larger screens) and I can't tell what my lighted/strobed 400mm drone is doing at the end of my street (1300 ft) w/o looking at the video feed. I could tell with field glasses, but wouldn't be practical for my purposes.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Try calling B&H for lots of good information.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

1 square mile is 640 acres.

alexol

Sorry - you're 100% correct. I meant four square miles, 2 x 2 being not too far for a drone.