How would you fly this job?

[S&S_Shovelhead]

Hello,

I received a job last week to fly approximately 900 acres with a topographic relief of 400m. My client requires an orthophoto (5cm GSD) and a DEM. I went out and set 14 GCPs around the site and tied them in with RTK. Half of the site is in an altitude limited zone of 60m due to a nearby airport.

Using DroneDeploy and an above terrain altitude of 60m caused my phantom 4 pro to almost crash into some trees due to what I believe was a inaccurate DEM of highly variable terrain. There is also the issue of constantly losing lock at 60m because of the hilly terrain. I can probably get permission from the airport to fly above 60m during a certain time as I do have my radio licence but DroneDeploy will still not allow me to enter a higher elevation. Map Pilot by drones made easy will, but it has been extremely buggy for me. This same job it would fly out until it lost radio connection and just hover there until it RTH from a low battery instead of continuing to fly the mission.

Any recommendations on how you would approach this project?

 

[BigAl07]

You might get more and more qualified responses over at :

Commercial Drone Pilots Forum

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commercialdronepilots.com

 

[Jiminy Cricket]

Drone Deploy caused my Phantom 4 pro to crash as well. After A LOT of log translations....in short the sensors were not active. It happened twice. As nice as that program is. I don't trust it for sudden elevation change or an errant tree that is sticking up. Just my experience not a cut or an endorsement.

 

[Corri]

Hi there
A little bit tricky, but it is a wonderfull job.
I fly all my jobs manualy, and I would do so also in your case if you have troble with Drone Deploy. With a GSD of 5cm you probably can not fly much more than 60m above ground.
Divide the area in different subareas and search for a good place where you can stay during a flight. Since the terrain is sloping, you should be able to observe the drone at all times. Always keep it slightly above the treetops. If you have enough distance to the drone, this works quite well, especially if the drone flies uphill. Then you can always see it against the sky.

 

[vgo195]

If you can’t follow the terrain in such jobs it is too difficult to get them done without problems. Map Pilot is the best app for this. It is a little buggy but not so much. You can use conectionless mode if you have connectivity problems.

 

[Johnnydrones1]

Ever tried maps made easy.... they offer a terrain setting that will keep the UAS at a set alt above the terrain.

 

[S&S_Shovelhead]

Ever tried maps made easy.... they offer a terrain setting that will keep the UAS at a set alt above the terrain.

Yes, it crashes probably 20% of our flights. I did infact try it on this job and it flew out to the border of me losing connection with the drone and stopped and hovered there. It's too unreliable to use for my self. I will be looking into using UgCS and report back on how that works for us.