Want to fly my family business's roof as a trial run

[Pipeliner_USA]

New to the board, new to the commercial drone world.

My family has a large industrial building with a flat steel roof. All in all its a couple acres of surface area. This application (roof inspections) seems to be a popular service so I was hoping someone could offer some best-practice tips. I do not plan on making this the basis of my business endeavors by any means, but I want to see what kind of deliverables my P4P can produce to determine if this is something I would tell a future customer I can provide.

My main questions are:

1) Would better results be expected using a DroneDeploy/Pix4D service to produce an orthomosaic than doing a traditional video and still captures? If anyone has used a mapping app for something like this, would love to hear feedback.

2) If I use DJI Go 4 instead of an abovementioned mapping service, which intelligent flight function would be the most appropriate?

3) I have plenty of experience mapping/imaging terrain so I have some personal preferences for altitudes I like to fly depending on what I want to produce afterwards. I've never had something like a steel roof be the subject though. Any advice on how high above the roof to film?

 

[vashon100]

Is the implication in #3 about the metal effect on the compass......if not, that's something I would be interested in knowing. I don't own a DJI yet and one reason is I can't seem to get a consistent story on metal, which seems to be everywhere in nearby city areas to fly/practice.

 

[Meta4]

Is the implication in #3 about the metal effect on the compass......if not, that's something I would be interested in knowing. I don't own a DJI yet and one reason is I can't seem to get a consistent story on metal, which seems to be everywhere in nearby city areas to fly/practice.

It's not metal that's a concern, it's iron and steel.
Only magnetic materials will affect your compass.
But if you are worried about flying near say, steel roofs, the distance away is the important factor.
If you fly just a metre above a steel roof, you will see compass error behaviour with the Phantom wanting to slowly spiral.
But if you lift to 3 metres or more, the magnetic influence of the steel roof is not enough to cause a problem.
Steel may be everywhere, but you usually don't fly very close to it.

 

[With The Birds]

Meta has given you a good rule of thumb re clearances. Being such a large structure I would be more concerned about what's under the roof sheeting, subject to what the internal spans are there are almost certainly I beams (large sections of ferrous metal.

As to your question on which intelligent flight mode to use I would start with you on the sticks untill younhave a feel for how the AC might behave. You don't want a compass error during an autonomous flight.