Where to go from here....

[jnowell]

Hi all, Jason Nowell here, I could use some career advice from people who are already working in the industry. I am taking my FAA part 107 test in a few weeks and can not decide where to focus my efforts after that. I have a lifetime of photography/videography experience as well as some pretty serious survey experience. I was doing magnetometer and sonar surveying in a marine environment searching for sunken historical shipwrecks so I am well versed in GPS, GIS, generating survey grids etc. I am also a life-long model airplane and helicopter pilot (and drones for the last 8 years) so I am beyond proficient in regards to piloting skills.

I guess my main problem is that I don't know the industry well enough to know what areas would best utilize my existing skills, and what areas are (or are not) in need of help in the near future. I don't mind educating myself further and I'm very technical and capable of learning new technologies and software, but I'm not looking to study for 4 years before being employable either. Long story short, I have the eye and skills to be a great aerial photographer and videographer but not sure that is the right career choice for me. I think my experience and technical aptitude would be better utilized in some sort of mapping environment.

I know this is a lot for one post, main questions looming in my head are:

1) Mapping or photography, which do you believe has more career options/job availability (without relocation)
2) If I were going to learn a new mapping software, what would you recommend.
3) is there any continuing education for mapping professionals that would be wise for me to take after I finish my Part 107
4) Any advice on starting your own company vs. joining an existing team.

Thanks in advance for any advice. I will be lurking around this forum likely answering my own questions but if you have the time and knowledge, I'm all ears.

Jason

 

[jnowell]

Forgot to add: I am currently flying a Mavic Mini and a homebuilt Autonomous Flying Wing (Zeta FX-63 Phantom with 3DRobotics APM 2.5 - older but still going strong). Looking into mapping platforms around $2K like the Autel Evo 2 Pro or similar.

 

[Mavikhan]

WELCOME ABOARD!

 

[dirkclod]

Welcome to CDP .
Look around and find what your interest is and let it rip . Have any question's feel free to ask any staff
in a message concerning the forum and glad you have joined .
Enjoy and be safe .

 

[Meta4]

2) If I were going to learn a new mapping software, what would you recommend.

Mapping apps are very easy to use
DroneDeploy is one of the industry leaders

Looking into mapping platforms around $2K like the Autel Evo 2 Pro or similar

You can't go past the Phantom 4 pro for mapping.
Just make sure you avoid the + model with the integrated screen as you can't install the mapping apps on that version.

 

[jaja6009]

For mapping you have to decide if you are going to offer low cost maps that are not absolute accurate (more like a current site condition) or if you want to offer maps that are placed to within 10cm and under.

If the second choice you will need PPK or RTK solutions. This needs to be factored into your capital budget. Since you come from a survey and GIS background you must know that these solutions can be pricey and technically involved.

Read your states laws on what you can offer, I am in NJ and they are strict in what type of "maps" you can offer as well as stockpiles.

You can use trial subscriptions for Pix4D, Drone Deploy, Agisoft and probably many of the other mapping softwares to find a fit for you. I would personally get your drone first and obtain several data sets before getting a trial subscription so that you can maximize your trial time to processing and comparing and refining your results.

Use the search and read, read, and read some more as I would bet that if you have a question it has already been asked and answered.

 

[BigAl07]

First off WELCOME to the forum

KUDOS to you for asking highly detailed questions BEFORE starting your endeavors. You may have saved yourself many $$ and I'm sure you will continue to do so going forward.

Here's my advice..... capitalize on what you know and can do. Find a NICHE environment that you can become a Subject Matter Expert and exploit it. But.... since you mention "without relocation" you'll have to make sure whatever Niche Industry you want to serve is viable in your area. Photography is probably "easier" to do well in without moving unless your area is already saturated with "Aerial Photographers".

Construction Progress Tracking is a good industry to get involved in but your area has to be booming in order to be able to support you day in and day out. We have construction projects we shoot 1x month and a few we shoot every 2 weeks. These have the least amount of "office time" and they pay pretty well considering the short amount of time we are actually in the air. Do remember you can't fly over people "currently" even on a job site and while this rule will change slightly in the future the stipulations make it pretty much the same as it is now. Lunch Breaks and after working hours is when we do most of our shoots. We can get in, shoot, and be out again in just a few minutes.

Good luck and keep the questions rolling

 

[jnowell]

Thanks for all the great advice, I've been reading and learning and then reading some more.

I do like the Phantom 4 Pro and being as I'm already a DJI guy I guess it makes sense to stick with them. I will find a thread on the pros and cons and do some more reading on that. I have a Best Buy credit card so that makes the phantom more enticing, LOL

I have been trying to learn more about doing the centimeter resolution stuff as it does interest me but I'm not connected to any industries that could really use that yet. It also looks like you have to become a professional licensed surveyor to really offer that here in Florida, so I need to look into the cost and time involved in that also. So much to learn, but I'm happy in that situation.

Thanks again, I will get my head wrapped around it more tonight and probably have some more thoughts then. I just want to make sure I don't miss a bus, or hop on the wrong one.

 

[jnowell]

So in taking your recommendations to heart and speaking with a local expert over dinner last night, I think I have a workable plan to justify my investment. I'm in West-Central Florida (Tampa area) and there are things we have an abundance of here. Golf Courses, Managed Condo properties, Phosphate mines, and tons of citrus/fruit agriculture. Real estate is also a hot commodity here but that market seems fairly saturated and doesn't interest me much, though I had considered hitting up the big yacht brokers to see if they were on the bandwagon here or not.

So my plan is many-fold, centering around agriculture/vegetation health. I want to spend the money to get a versatile and capable drone, then try to set up monthly or weekly surveys of local golf courses, orange orchards, and managed properties (my local expert's company manages 500 properties, and he wants someone surveying his grounds for trouble, so that may be a big pile of small jobs right off the bat). I also know people in the golf arena here, so that will help me get started there. I have spoken to a local municipal course and they are not currently doing it because in his words "there isn't anyone local offering it for a reasonable price". He said there was a company that would house a drone at your facility, and fly it remotely with an RPIC on site. Then a week later they would get a report, but the service was way more expensive than they could afford. They have a keen interest in having it available in emergencies or even a monthly schedule if priced right. Lots of services like this based out of Tampa, but I'm out in Largo on the peninsula and I don't see much competition out there, so that is good.

Another avenue I want to research is mold remediation, there is a guy in Missouri using an ag drone with a sprayer system, but he is spraying an eco-friendly mold solution on tile roofs (which turn ugly with mold very quickly here in Florida). He said he doesn't even do ag work anymore because he is too busy and making more money spraying roofs. He does 4 per day and swears he gets $0.50 per square foot of the structure. Not a bad gig I'd say, food for thought.

Question: I'm thinking most of the data I'm thinking about will be used in ways that wouldn't need 10cm resolution? Another acquaintance of mine is the RIPC for Pelican Golf Course here, which uses the service mentioned above. They spot irrigation leaks, dry or over-watered soil, vegetation health, even patches of weeds but he said they don't get location data that accurate, and they use a regular WAAS handheld GPS (+/- 6 feet) to go to the problem areas anyway so it wasn't important to him. I assume agriculture may be different, but I don't want to pay for RTK / PPK now unless I have to or should. Will it hamper my efforts in agriculture/vegetation?

Unrelated long (but interesting) reading:

I developed an ulterior motive based on the suggestion that I" follow what I already know", and this led me to the agricultural side of things because of the capabilities of the sensors used. I spent 12 years surveying for and diving on historic shipwrecks (mainly those of Spanish origin which were likely to be carrying large sums of gold and silver, working for well-funded treasure hunters). We surveyed looking for minute variations in the earth's magnetic field caused by cannon, anchors, cannonballs, and ship's fittings. Most of these wrecks in Florida met their demise close to shore on the shallow reefs. People find gold and silver coins mere feet from the edge of the beach, and those trails of artifacts carry into the beach and up onto dry land (this is proven by what is found every time a hurricane strips the sand from the beach near a shipwreck).

It seems to me that with careful planning a guy might be able to spot large chunks of metal buried under the beach with the same tech carried by ag drones. I happen to know of one such cannon I could use for testing. If I could find the right dataset and way of filtering it to make my known cannon visible through the sand, I could apply that to the entire coast where 11 ships full of gold wrecked, and potentially find undiscovered remnants under the beach (which is 100% finder's keepers). For reference, we used a Geometrics G-882 Cesium Vapor Magnetometer towed behind a boat to detect ferrous metals, along with Klien Side-Imaging Sonar to look for anything sticking up from the sand. Yes, we were successful many times at finding valuable shipwrecks, but I digress.

I recently read a book called "Archaeology from Space" by Sarah Parcak. It details how they used Hyperspectral satellite imagery to discover all sorts of things from gigantic buried pyramids down to 3-foot wide foot paths compressed over time by people traveling the same route over and over. This is how they recently discovered where the people who built the pyramids at Giza lived, they followed the well-worn footpath back to the village using soil moisture content data). The compacted earth absorbed and released moisture at a different rate than the surrounding dirt, and at a certain time of the evening as the ground cooled the path became visible in a certain spectrum. If we take that same idea and make it a higher resolution by imaging from a drone a hundred feet away instead of a satellite many miles away, and who knows what we might uncover.

The treasure hunting business is one that I am already considered an expert in, so if I could get it to work even moderately well, I think the millionaire gamblers that invest in treasure hunts would likely bite and pay me handsomely to help them out. How's that for a Niche market. I have rambled enough for one post, would love to hear anyone's thoughts on any of this.

Jason

 

[chetk77]

Welcome from central Florida.

 

[jnowell]

Welcome from central Florida.

Welcome to you too, Chet. Are you working / flying locally? if so, what industry?

 

[dougcjohn]

Sonething to consider... I've considering Ag related sUAV myself (midwest). I haven't explored it deeply, but I understood the Ag drones (Argas T20, etc) used to spray required additional certification, and total weight including payload of liquid may take you over the PT107 and require Pilots license. The certification may have been more towards the application of chemicals onto fields... not sure if that effects other chemicals or spraying within residential.

Also as you're considering construction/survey projects. The 10CM or less that referenced obtainable via PPK / RTK hardware. Keep in mind that is associated to the actual ground point(s)... associating the true ground points within the image points does require PPK/RTK hardware. Again something I've considered but not justified the purchase... yet.

The images themselves will remain the same in accuracy (dependent of method of collection, photography hardware, and accuracy of sUAV to maintain accurate flight). The measurements within the image's generated ortho and volumetrics don't require PPK/RTK. Measuring construction, a landscape retaining wall, DEM elevation, planning a layout and using distances within the ortho... image & ortho are accurate, just not "true" to the physical ground points. If large area, the PPK/RTK would help correct curvature of ground... but most projects this wouldn't be a major factor for the requested work material.

In addition, several DJI platforms that offer a RTK option, is not survey oriented. It's for stability and accuracy of craft in high magnetic Interferences... power lines, etc. To my knowledge, the M210, M300, M600Pro and the new Mavic 2 Ent Adv all offer RTK but for stability, not survey focused.

These platforms require 3rd Party solutions, which most are PPK for the Survey focus. In my personal opinion, I'd elect over the P4P RTK.

 

[jnowell]

Thank you Doug, that is some great insight. I've been narrowing my mindset and trying to focus on areas that I feel I can make a business out of locally. Florida law isn't particularly clear and looks to require you to become a certified land surveyor before you can offer or make certain claims, and also has specific regulations on aerial spraying like you mentioned. This caused me to back away a bit from the spraying and technical/construction survey side of things. I was stuck between golf courses and property managers, but I have a better contact in the property management industry and more potential local customers in that arena as well. I have another meeting set with the property management guy to drill down into specifics of what he wants to see. It also looks like the same aerial system needed for property management would also be helpful for smaller golf courses.

I'm not sure I need a Matrice at this point, and I'm not certain that my start-up budget can accommodate a Matrice and everything else I will need. I'm thinking along the lines of a P4 Multispectral or maybe a different vehicle with the Parrot Micasense multispectral sensor on it to keep my startup costs lower. In a perfect world, I could buy a Phantom 4 Pro V2 and add the DJI multispectral system to it, but I cannot find if this is even possible. So much to learn, I do appreciate the nudges in the right direction.

Jason

 

[dougcjohn]

Jason,
Many options in the Ag sensors.
You've listed several great options.
If interested, another one very popular both for sensors but also for their excellent software.

https://sentera.com/sensors/

Similar, I have many desired tangents and limited funds and time. The Sentera will be the system I go with when that project becomes reality. It's getting attention in Ag, several COOP's are attempting to add Aerial Field Dx services... kinda like no-till years back, it has strong benefits but very slow to adopt.

 

[jnowell]

Jason,
Many options in the Ag sensors.
You've listed several great options.
If interested, another one very popular both for sensors but also for their excellent software.

https://sentera.com/sensors/

Similar, I have many desired tangents and limited funds and time. The Sentera will be the system I go with when that project becomes reality. It's getting attention in Ag, several COOP's are attempting to add Aerial Field Dx services... kinda like no-till years back, it has strong benefits but very slow to adopt.

Those sensors are nice, and 1/2 again more resolution as the P4 Multispectral! I should know more about the reality of my project tonight, 500+ multi-family beach condo properties under one management company. He wants simple aerial imagery and videography plus NDVI of entire grounds for each property. I believe they will go forward with the project if I can give them a good price per property. I'm thinking I could pay my bills and pay off the initial hardware and software investment with this one project, and then I would have a company paid for with 500 sample properties under my belt. That should let me go after other property management companies and offer them the same service with use cases of problems identified via my imagery. I will know more about what he is looking for tonight, so I will report back tomorrow.

Thanks again, Doug. Slowly but surely I am zeroing in on a workable solution.