7 members · 6 posts · UAS
Part 107 operators doing real work. Survey, inspection, mapping, and agriculture. Authorisations, insurance, pricing, and getting along with the airport you are flying next to.
This is a professional operations group. Camera gear talk elsewhere. If you are describing a flight near controlled airspace, say how you got the authorisation.
Kai Nakamura (pinned)
Working operators only. The fastest way to lose the permissive rules we have is a hundred people flying survey grids in class D without asking anybody. Post how you got your authorisation, not just that you flew.
Curtis Mabry
Airport side again. We are writing drone operations into the airfield manual this year rather than treating every request as an exception. If you fly commercially near a field that has not done this, ask them to. It is easier for us to say yes to a process than to a phone call at 4pm on a Friday.
Kai Nakamura
Survey pricing follow-up, since a few people asked privately. Orchard and vineyard work pays per acre and repeats every season, which is the part that matters. One-off inspection jobs pay better per hour and never call back. Build the boring recurring contracts first and the interesting work finds you.
Curtis Mabry
Airport manager perspective, invited by Kai. Call us. That is the whole post. A five minute phone call before you file turns a maybe into a yes about nine times in ten, and it means when something does go wrong I know who you are and I am not starting from zero.
Kai Nakamura
Pricing, because everybody asks privately and nobody posts it. I charge per acre for mapping and per structure for inspection, never per hour. Hourly punishes you for getting fast, and getting fast is the entire business.
Ray Ortiz
Maintenance question. We are looking at drone inspection for tail and upper fuselage work instead of building scaffolding every time. Anybody actually doing this on transport category airframes, or is it still a sales pitch?