Radio Line of Sight Surveying

[mattdbal]

Hey everyone,

*Note: I did a bit of searching before deciding to post this

I use drones for microwave/radio tower inspection and sometimes line of sight surveying. As we all know, phantoms don't have a zoom on the camera which is proving line of sight surveying to be difficult. Does anyone here use a drone for line of sight path surveys? If so, what do you use and what is the typical distance between sites?

I've been looking into matrice drones with a Zenmuse Z30, but I fear that the photo quality still wouldn't be good enough for LOS surveying. Has anyone heard anything about other options?

 

[yorlik]

Why not one of the many online programs?

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[mattdbal]

Why not one of the many online programs?

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

We use path analysis software and other programs, but a field verification is necessary because trees and other obstacles aren't always visible using other tools.

 

[TheoP]

Hi,
I started using a P4P+ recently for LOS surveys. Its very good to take a look over the trees or a nearby hill. I found that taking a dng photo gives the best results as it can be cropped quite a bit and processed to bring out details in far away landscape.
My links were quite long (55km) to a hill that I could recognize in image. In another shorter link (22km) it was impossible to see the remote site from photos as there were no contrasting shapes or colors. Both these links are greenfield so there were no towers to look for.
I am looking for options to modify the P4P camera to increase it's focal length.
When I checked actual height vs controller height I found it slightly optimistic. Measured 28m with laser for a 30m reported height.

 

[doktorinjh]

a field verification is necessary

Have you considered attaching a small radio to the UAV and measuring signal strength directly from the location and height? I've seen others in the industry mention a similar setup, but it's not my area of expertise.

 

[Johnny C]

Hey everyone,

*Note: I did a bit of searching before deciding to post this

I use drones for microwave/radio tower inspection and sometimes line of sight surveying. As we all know, phantoms don't have a zoom on the camera which is proving line of sight surveying to be difficult. Does anyone here use a drone for line of sight path surveys? If so, what do you use and what is the typical distance between sites?

I've been looking into matrice drones with a Zenmuse Z30, but I fear that the photo quality still wouldn't be good enough for LOS surveying. Has anyone heard anything about other options?

 

[Johnny C]

Hi Matt

I too am looking for a drone for line of sight surveys for telecoms sites so we are looking for towers on the horizon with which to connect into.

I'm looking for a drone that can display orientation so we know when flying where the remote towers are and can zoom in. The second thing we can is a good camera that can zoom in. Did you manage to find a drone that works really well for line of sight surveys?