More TX Pilots Needed for Telecom - Also Other States for Telecom, Power, Golf and Mapping

[Larry W Blaylock]

Our pilots supply their own equipment, we work with our pilots to make sure they have required equipment for the task being asked to do. Yes we do sell DJI equipment as well as other accessories. We usually stock all the items you mentioned.

Looking at the minimum equipment investment it's a bit of money to get involved at your level. I'm just flying the P3A right now. Are far as licensing and insurance is that up to the individual or does it fall under your companie's umbrella. My interest right now is to get the FAA license and work locally on residential and commercial real estate and farm and hunting properties.

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

Looking at the minimum equipment investment it's a bit of money to get involved at your level. I'm just flying the P3A right now. Are far as licensing and insurance is that up to the individual or does it fall under your companie's umbrella. My interest right now is to get the FAA license and work locally on residential and commercial real estate and farm and hunting properties.

It appears you have a sound plan Larry. Minimum equipment would be a P4 or P4P, we prefer the P4P because it can change from 2.4 to 5.8 ghz which can help if you are experiencing RFI. We believe that anyone operating as a commercial enterprise should carry their own liability and hull insurance. We are required to carry a higher level of liability insurance to operate or contract pilots to do work for us. All of our pilots are required to hold a 107 certificate.

 

[Larry W Blaylock]

It appears you have a sound plan Larry. Minimum equipment would be a P4 or P4P, we prefer the P4P because it can change from 2.4 to 5.8 ghz which can help if you are experiencing RFI. We believe that anyone operating as a commercial enterprise should carry their own liability and hull insurance. We are required to carry a higher level of liability insurance to operate or contract pilots to do work for us. All of our pilots are required to hold a 107 certificate.

Thanks for the info. I'm looking into the 107. I have liability insurance as a member of the AMA. If things work out on my business plan I'll update my equipment. I'll keep the P3A of course as a back-up.

 

[EhmayWuntee]

Is there much need for East Texas?
I am a 107 certified P4P owner living in Longview, TX and might consider looking into this further if my immediate area has a need and doesn't have many pilots lined up.

 

[aerialimagery]

Are contractors who work with you allowed to do similar work directly with their own clients? (If they find their own cell-phone tower prospects that do not already have a relationship with your company, are they free to work with them?)

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

Is there much need for East Texas?
I am a 107 certified P4P owner living in Longview, TX and might consider looking into this further if my immediate area has a need and doesn't have many pilots lined up.

We have not had towers come up for contract in the "Longview" area we do expect it in the near future. We do have some ongoing inspections west of San Antonio as we speak and have had previous contracts in SA and Austin. We do have pilots scattered around Texas, which is ok as some people have other commitments and can not always get away from their day job. We also try to fit the needs of the contracts with the needs of the pilots matching the amount of towers with the pilots but also getting the contract done in a timely fashion.

 

[colinjfischer]

Just signed up! Hope we can do some business together!

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

Are contractors who work with you allowed to do similar work directly with their own clients? (If they find their own cell-phone tower prospects that do not already have a relationship with your company, are they free to work with them?)

Yes they are allowed to do so, we can also assist with the backend processing and data hosting that most carrier and tower owners will require.

 

[maviclint]

At this time the Phantom 4 Pro would be considered the minimum. The Inspire 1 with an X5 16MP camera does NOT fit the minimum standard for our clients.

Curious why the X5 on an Inspire Pro doesn't meet the requirements...? Camera specs seem better than the P4P, especially with aperture settings, larger sensor, etc.

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

Curious why the X5 on an Inspire Pro doesn't meet the requirements...? Camera specs seem better than the P4P, especially with aperture settings, larger sensor, etc.

The X5 is 16MP, the P4P is 20MP. 20 MP is mandated by the client not us.

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

Just signed up! Hope we can do some business together!

Thanks! I see your registration form, it has been a busy day. We will contact you ASAP.

 

[GadgetGuy]

What is the cost of the necessary training required for telecom and golf course turf inspections?

 

[daddioJP]

It's very exciting to see this; I believe companies like your yours hiring local pilots is a great business model. I just saw this post and submitted the application. Quick summary: A professional photographer by trade and have been flying for over a year now. Have my Part 107, insurance, and a somewhat flexible schedule. In the Dallas / Ft. Worth area with pretty easy access to Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. And I teach a drone photography class. Would enjoy talking to you more about this. Thanks for letting us know about this.

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

What is the cost of the necessary training required for telecom and golf course turf inspections?

These fees have not yet been determined.

 

[Panomapic]

Filled out the form. Would be interested in learning more. I have a Yuneec H520. Presumably with the 20MP E90 camera this will be acceptable?

 

[Michael J West]

This is interesting. Who handles Arkansas? Would love to find out if there are any similar opportunities in this area.

 

[GadgetGuy]

These fees have not yet been determined.

With all due respect, that should be very concerning to anyone considering this "opportunity." Lots of scams have a similar requirement, where there is little or no work actually available after the "certification process", but the mandatory paid training is a prerequisite for anyone who wishes to even be considered.

You are asking potential telecom candidates to travel, at their own expense to your location in FL, for one to two more days away from home than before (total number of training days still not specified) for an as yet undetermined fee for "training" so they can be qualified to bid for future opportunities.

Now you will also be offering golf course turf inspection training for an unspecified additional fee.

What am I missing, other than that you are now in the paid training business, instead of the contracting business?

"We have recently been able to take over the telecom training from our training provider and will be moving the cell phone tower inspection training to our location in FL beginning in mid March - its class length will also be increasing by 1-2 days so we can spend additional time on some of the things that we felt needed more explanation and training. We are also beginning our golf course turf inspection training in late March or early April here in Florida as well."

 

[Bobby A.]

I guess I misunderstood your post, I though you were looking for pilots to fly equipment for companies. Numerous of us fly high end equipment that we would usually never purchase ourselves unless we had secured contacts already to offset the cost of 25K minimum investment in entry level equipment. I got the impression from your post that you were playing middleman between companies looking for experienced pilots and that you (for the cost of the training) would supply the various verifications companies might be looking for in pilots.
Is this correct? Just trying to make sure I understand what you're offering and fur who....

 

[GadgetGuy]

I guess I misunderstood your post, I though you were looking for pilots to fly equipment for companies. Numerous of us fly high end equipment that we would usually never purchase ourselves unless we had secured contacts already to offset the cost of 25K minimum investment in entry level equipment. I got the impression from your post that you were playing middleman between companies looking for experienced pilots and that you (for the cost of the training) would supply the various verifications companies might be looking for in pilots.
Is this correct? Just trying to make sure I understand what you're offering and fur who....

I think that is what he is claiming to offer, after you pay him for the as yet unspecified mandatory training costs at his location, to be eligible for any such jobs he may, or may not have, for any such qualified pilots. Sorry, but my scam radar is off the charts on this one!

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

With all due respect, that should be very concerning to anyone considering this "opportunity." Lots of scams have a similar requirement, where there is little or no work actually available after the "certification process", but the mandatory paid training is a prerequisite for anyone who wishes to even be considered.

You are asking potential telecom candidates to travel, at their own expense to your location in FL, for one to two more days away from home than before (total number of training days still not specified) for an as yet undetermined fee for "training" so they can be qualified to bid for future opportunities.

Now you will also be offering golf course turf inspection training for an unspecified additional fee.

What am I missing, other than that you are now in the paid training business, instead of the contracting business?

"We have recently been able to take over the telecom training from our training provider and will be moving the cell phone tower inspection training to our location in FL beginning in mid March - its class length will also be increasing by 1-2 days so we can spend additional time on some of the things that we felt needed more explanation and training. We are also beginning our golf course turf inspection training in late March or early April here in Florida as well."

@GadgetGuy,

I appreciate your concern for helping make sure pilots do not fall prey to people looking to take advantage of them or attempt to get them to pay for something of no value. We are of the same mindset on that - and certainly any pilot who has been following us on the other forums (especially Inspire Pilots) knows our commitment to helping pilots learn, understand their equipment, and work their way into this industry in a way that makes sense for them. In addition, we spend hours everyday supporting non Florida Drone Supply clients on the equipment they have purchased elsewhere because their vendor (and sometimes its the manufacturer) does not know the equipment well enough to answer their questions or sold them equipment that is not appropriate for their needs. We are very committed to the industry and the safe commercial use of drones in as many ways as possible.

As for our network of pilots, we are putting our pilots to work. We have contract pilots out inspecting cell phone towers and power lines as I type this message.

We were part of an emergency response effort after the hurricane and had pilots flying telecom and power restoration - some for nearly 2 months. The power line contract we have pilots flying right now in VA and NC is going to turn into a multi-year contract for some of our pilots. The telecom work just began in January (currently we have flown towers in 8 states) and is ramping up to very, very large numbers of assets to inspect for the rest of the year. We have also been approached for our assistance in locating pilots on a couple small (very small) projects outside the US. I hope you understand that the cell phone providers require that we fly very specific flight profiles for their work. Our photos and videos are uploaded, processed and hosted by a company that sits on the National Association of Tower Erectors with all the major players in cellular and tower ownership. The missions and flight profiles that were designed are specific to the platform that these companies use with their engineers when planning space for equipment upgrades, when determining antenna angles, etc. As such, training is required. We simply can not deliver random photos and videos to them.

The 3 day training that was originally provided to our pilots from the company that developed this profile could have been better. We had a handful of pilots attend the training in December and begin flying towers in January and they felt they could have been better prepared for the "real world" issues you find in the field. To assist with this, we sent an employee to TX to work with a number of the pilots on some of the complex towers and antennas they were encountering. He stayed there with them for nearly 2 weeks to make sure the contract was properly completed. This is part of the reason that the new pilots will experience an additional day or two onsite with us. We are not asking the original pilots to come back - we just are adjusting the training to do what we feel will make more successful pilots in the field. I am sorry if you got the impression that we were going to ask the pilots that have already been trained to return to our location in FL for another day or two - that was not the message that was intended. Going forward we are adjusting the time and material that we feel is going to be the most beneficial for our pilots.

Our golf course work is developing on 3 fronts:

Cinematic Work. This is much harder to scale because training in not something that can be done in a few days - it requires people to have extensive knowledge in video production and that comes from working in the industry for years. It also involves more than drones as we use cameras on the ground as well in additional to models, slow motion, etc. This will likely develop into small teams that travel. There are many golf courses looking to bring content to GPS aware golf carts and we are pursuing those opportunities but again, we are not certain this is a likely program we can roll out on a large scale. 3 pilots worked together recently completing work like this in our local market.

Multispectral Turf Analysis. This is where we are targeting training for our pilots. We have about 2 years into the development and customization of someone else's software to meet the needs of our golf course clients. We have not found there is a single "off the shelf" solution to this need. There is a lot to train pilots when it comes to multi spectral image analysis in addition to the use of ground control points. We recently invited to meet with a small group of golf course superintendents (60-70) to introduce the program in FL and prepare to scale it to the other areas in the country - especially those in the warmer climates with longer golf seasons. This again is not something that can be done without training pilots everything that is required for a successful flight, proper coverage, accurate ground control integration and the interpretation of multispectral data and reports. The pilots flying this work will be the local contact for the golf course and need to be familiar and well informed on the data they are helping collect and report.

High Precision Contours. This is another area that we are working on a national contract. I am not allowed to share much in the way of details (yet) but want to point out tha this is another are in golf course work that will require specific training and equipment.

While it is true that we have not specified the training timeline or cost on the golf course turf program yet, we do want to get an idea of how many people are even interested in that type of work. It is very different than the utility jobs we have in process now - those are much easier to train and plan for. If technical golf course flights are not going to be a national product, we will likely just promote them in the states that have the highest number of golf courses and longer golf seasons.

I hope this helps make more sense of the information you have been getting. There are multiple people that go online for Florida Drone Supply to help answer questions and provide information. I personally was out of town on the other coast of FL all last week or I could have jumped in earlier to share more information. I'm Michael and you can generally tell my posts because I write too much (or so I am told)...haha.

Anyway, if I can answer any more questions for you just ask...or feel free to call as well...(855) 8-DRONES. I literally could have continued writing on and on about this as there are many of our business lines that were not even talked about above.

Here are a couple links to when we were flying power work with Duke Energy:

Duke Energy deploys drones in effort to restore power after Hurricane Irma

Hurricane Irma: Drones help power companies shorten repair times