c/techniques

Old surveyor trying to understand the drone world. I get that RTK is real-time corrections and PPK is post-processed. But when would you choose one over the other? My instinct says real-time is alway

Had a client reject our deliverable because they wanted sub-centimeter accuracy on a parking lot design survey. Our checkpoints showed 2-3cm which I thought was excellent for photogrammetry. Is sub-c

Getting conflicting info on this. Some people say RTK means you don't need any GCPs, others say you still need them. Just did my first RTK flight on a 40 acre site and didn't use any ground control. R

Had a call from a newer surveyor this week who was getting consistent 10-20cm offsets between his RTK positions and known control points. Helped him troubleshoot it and figured the checklist we went t

Landing a construction monitoring contract - weekly flights over an 80-acre residential development. 18-month project. Looking for advice on: - Establishing permanent GCPs that won't get bulldozed -

Old surveyor here trying to figure out how drones fit into boundary work. I understand they're not replacing monuments and legal descriptions, but there's got to be value somewhere. How are you guys

I've been flying everything at 80% frontal / 80% side overlap since I started drone surveying. Recently read that 75/65 is sufficient for most work and would significantly reduce my flight times. Has

Working on a 3-mile corridor survey for a proposed road alignment. 200ft wide corridor. Flying at 250ft AGL with 75/70 overlap. How do you guys handle GCP placement on long linear sites? Every 500ft

Just got a project that generated 12,000 images over a 500-acre site. My workstation (Ryzen 7, 32GB RAM, RTX 3070) is choking on this in Pix4D. Estimated processing time: 4 days. Options I'm consider

We do a lot of repeat work at the same sites - construction monitoring, stockpile volumes, progress photos. I got tired of setting up a tripod base every visit so last month I installed a permanent ba

Working on a forestry project that needs canopy height modeling and below-canopy terrain. Obviously photogrammetry can't see through trees so the DTM under tree cover is basically interpolated. LiDAR

Got my Part 107.29 night waiver approved. First nighttime thermal inspection job is next week - a solar panel array. Anyone doing regular night ops? Looking for practical advice: - Anti-collision lig

Always been told to fly as low as legally possible for best GSD. But I'm starting to wonder if that's always right. Lower flights mean more images, longer processing, more battery swaps. At what poin

Got a request to create 3D models of building facades for an architectural preservation project. Downtown historic district, 15 buildings. I know I need oblique photos but I'm not sure about the opti

Quarry client wants monthly volume reports. They've been doing it with GPS surveys and getting results they trust. Now they want to switch to drones for speed. First comparison: our drone volume was

Our crew just finished a nightmare site - 200 acres of mixed terrain for a proposed residential development. Steep hillsides (some near vertical), dense tree canopy in the ravines, and about 350 feet

Got a request to survey building facades for a renovation project. They want accurate measurements of windows, doors, and architectural features. I know I need oblique angles but not sure about the o

We fly weekly stockpiles at our quarry. Using M3E RTK with DroneDeploy. Comparing our drone volumes to scale ticket records and we're usually within 2-3% which management is happy with. But I'm curio

We do monthly survey flights at 3 different quarries. Looking to compare notes with others doing similar work. Challenges we're dealing with: - Highwall safety (flying close to vertical faces) - Dust

Trying to streamline our workflow for generating cross-sections from drone-derived surfaces. Currently exporting to Civil3D and doing it there but it feels clunky. We need sections every 50ft along h

Curious what overlap people are using for typical construction topo flights. I've been doing 75/75 (front/side) but wondering if that's overkill for flat sites. Flying at 250ft AGL with M3E RTK. Site

ok so after 3 months of struggling with my RTK setup and finally getting it dialed in, I wanted to share what I learned. mostly because I wish someone had written this when I started. if your receive

We're setting up a second survey crew and debating whether to go NTRIP-only or invest in UHF radios for the base-rover link. Currently our main crew uses NTRIP everywhere and it works fine in suburban