Are you a Full-Time or Part-Time sUAV Operator?

MapMaker53 · Apr 13, 2018

I think it might be interesting to get a feel for what percentage of commercial operators work full-time (their main income) or work part-time (supplementing income). Please take the poll and add any comments you wish to make.

I work for an environmental firm and am periodically called upon to fly our often large-acre work sites and provide video and photo documentation of the investigation and remediation operations to our clients. So my sUAV work is part of my general salary as manager of our graphics department. I also do the post-production work.

UAV_Mapper · Apr 13, 2018

I work for a government agency and we utilize manned aircraft, as well as UAS. If all goes according to plan, we'll be flying UAS multiple times a week and the manned aircraft a couple of times a month. Our primary focus is design-level mapping to support engineering design, but we have done a lot of PR work, as well.

R.Perry · Apr 13, 2018

Let see, since I"m almost 70 flying commercial is no longer an options. Bought a drone to do roof inspections with grandson. (Home inspection business) ended up getting hired to fly two days a week at UC Merced CA doing mapping, panos, progressions and elevation shoots. I don't need the work, I need to get out of the house and do something, and keep out of the wife's' hair. .
The company I work for doesn't have enough business for a drone only photographer, so most of the full time people do interior photo documentation.
I can see there is a great future for drone work, however I think it is going to get cut throat because how inexpensive it is to get into the business.

svct · Apr 13, 2018

MapMaker53 said:
I think it might be interesting to get a feel for what percentage of commercial operators work full-time (their main income) or work part-time (supplementing income). Please take the poll and add any comments you wish to make.

I work for an environmental firm and am periodically called upon to fly our often large-acre work sites and provide video and photo documentation of the investigation and remediation operations to our clients. So my sUAV work is part of my general salary as manager of our graphics department. I also do the post-production work.

I'm an engineer. My day job is scheduling $400+m/ yr construction. I fly mapping to support design and otherwise "on the side". I intended to be full time flying, but the demand for my day skills is so high with gr8$ that I followed the wallet instead of my dream job flying. Common sense prevailed. I have very little patience for [Language Removed]stupidly low paying job offers. (Period)

teamdirtydrone · Apr 14, 2018

Drone Opping is about 40-50% of my job working in film, otherwise cinematography and directing.

TreeLineView · Apr 14, 2018

Full time Software Engineer. Part time flying during summer months mostly Real Estate and Commercial shoots. Most of my spare time spent attending small business regional meetings trying to educate our customers on this special tool and how it can help them be successful. Or and lots of flying. 5 days a week.....

lalvar41 · Apr 14, 2018

Very interesting post. I also do this part time. Same case, good full time job, drone part time. Also, let me share another learning: if you do Real Estate listings drone jobs, sooner or later, you will need to do interior photography too.

Moosewax · Apr 14, 2018

Full time for a mid size engineering firm with many different specialties in survey, infrastructure, utilities, environmental etc. Mostly collect LiDAR and RGB orthophotos for orthomosaics and/or traditional photogrammetrist stereo mapping (planimetrics, DWGs etc). Also collect some multispectral, LWIR, oblique photos and video work as it comes up too.

TreeLineView · Apr 17, 2018

lalvar41 said:
Very interesting post. I also do this part time. Same case, good full time job, drone part time. Also, let me share another learning: if you do Real Estate listings drone jobs, sooner or later, you will need to do interior photography too.

I to started seeing that trend last year. Several of my listing agents have gone back to their inside guy because he now has a flying camera and takes a couple of pics along with the rest of his presentation. I changed gears and focus on agents that have listings in the 5 to 15 million dollar range. Now I do less shoots but my shoot fee is higher. Seems to balance out.

R.Perry · Apr 17, 2018

Had dinner with my bother in-law and he worked for the power company and is now retired but still in the loop. He said they are looking to hire licensed drone pilots to do power line inspections and it will be a full time job. They will be supplying the drones and all equipment including the training for how the inspections need to be performed.

So this sounds like it might be an upcoming great opportunity for a full time drone operation. There goes a helicopter job down the tubes.

Red90 · Apr 18, 2018

I own a production company that has been trading for the last 15 years. Flying has increasingly become part of the service that we offer & most of our films will feature aerial images in some shape or form. I fly around 15-20 hours a month for work.

embayweather · Apr 19, 2018

I cannot tick. Box above because I am part time but don’t work as I gave up that habit many years ago.

MapMaker53 · Apr 19, 2018

embayweather said:
I cannot tick. Box above because I am part time but don’t work as I gave up that habit many years ago.

Thanks for the feedback, embayweather. I've added another category that will hopefully apply.

embayweather · Apr 21, 2018

Lightning to the north and west

embayweather · Apr 21, 2018

Oops, wrong message there. Thanks for adding tha category

R Martin · May 3, 2018

I manage the field services side of a GIS department at a university and use the UAS on a part-time basis to enhance our mapping capabilities and save time and resources on new construction projects. I can see this turning into a full-time gig after retirement due to the contacts that I have made with our contractors.

R.Perry · May 3, 2018

R Martin said:
I manage the field services side of a GIS department at a university and use the UAS on a part-time basis to enhance our mapping capabilities and save time and resources on new construction projects. I can see this turning into a full-time gig after retirement due to the contacts that I have made with our contractors.

I have a question for you. I know nothing about surveying, but the surveyors at my job site are now asking for the GPS and time of each photo. I told them how to find the GPS and time and date info.
If the drone mapping isn't accurate enough for survey work, why would they be interested in the the GPS info on my mapping?

R Martin · May 3, 2018

R.Perry said:
I have a question for you. I know nothing about surveying, but the surveyors at my job site are now asking for the GPS and time of each photo. I told them how to find the GPS and time and date info.
If the drone mapping isn't accurate enough for survey work, why would they be interested in the the GPS info on my mapping?

Each time you take an image with the UAS it records a lot of data and writes it to the EXIF file on the image. The information includes the UAS heading, barometric altitude, northing, easting, timestamp, and other information. When you create an orthomosaic with image processing software like Pix4D or Drone Deploy, the software reads the EXIF information in each image to position and line the images up in order to create the orthomosaic. You can further refine the image placement and location by adding ground control point information with anchors identified points to a specific location.

A surveyor can process the images you took into an ortho, and assuming that they identified specific locations that they can find within your images (like a curb junction or a point in an expansion joint) then they can georeference your ortho to make it more accurate. Its not as accurate as setting ground control points to pick out of individual images, but it can place the orthomosaic a lot closer in the ball park.

For the record, 'm not a surveyor: I primarily map utility data but there is a lot more to the job as well.

TheEDCZone · May 30, 2018

My wife was diagnosed with Terminal Breast Cancer in Sep 2016, and on the 10th April 2017 we found out she had a Terminal Brain Tumour so since then I have not worked and been my wife's full time career, chef, Uber driver, looking after our three kids and also being her Personal Assistant.

So I started looking a the Drone Industry as I needed to have something to fall back on if Lisa couldn't beat her Cancer, as I am 43 in December and trying to find work that I would be passionate about and love is very slim. So I bought a Mavic Pro fly more pack, and then completed a CASA approved Remote Pilot Licence (RePL), I also got my Aeronautical Radio Operators Certificate.

I was originally looking at Real Estate, Aerial Photos and Videos. But after talking to my wife, we realised I was aiming to low and needed to look beyond just Real Estate so now taking a look at Inspections, Survey & Mapping, and any other Commercial Industries.

I have as of this week applied for my RPA Operators Certificate (ReOC) so that I can run my business. I have in the last 3 weeks bought the Matrice 210 with the Zenmuse X5S, so far clocked up over 3 hours on it.

I am doing a Survey & Mapping course on the 9th & 10th June so that I can fully tap into the Matrice 210's systems and be more confident using it and obtaining the data my clients want.

So thats where I am going with my Drone business.

UPDATE: I passed my Remote Operators Certificate (ReOC) on the 28th June 2018.