Diversifying makes for a busy week...

[Donnie Frank]

Hey doods!

It's funny...when I first started this business, everybody, including myself, instantly thought "real estate" would be the perfect market for these drone things. Years later I find it ironic that the residential real estate market is actually the worst market ever...with commercial real estate running a close second. Occasionally, I'll do a commercial real estate job if I've got nothing else going on, but I tell ya...those people kill me. I'm thinking about cutting that market out altogether.

Real estate agents are notoriously poor communicators (can take days to respond to email - and even then they only read the first 2 sentences if you're lucky). They want all the latest tech, but are completely technically inept. One days it's, "Can you deliver the photos digitally???" And the next day it's, "How do I use this Google Drive thing???" And then three days later, "Can you put those photos back on the cloud?" And then 6 days later it's, "Can you put those photos back on the cloud AGAIN???" I hate having to explain to clients that I'm not an archive vault for their media files. ARGH! All this for a lousy $150....that took 5 emails to collect...ugh.... I'm glad I don't count on this market for my drone revenue....though it DOES give me an opportunity to dust off the ol' Mavic Pro. So there's that.

On the menu for THIS week:

Saturday (Today): Construction progress video (Inspire 1)
Monday: Mapping (P4P)
Tuesday: Traffic analysis (P4P)
Wednesday: Traffic analysis (P4P)
Thursday: Traffic analysis (P4P)

NO real estate. All work I enjoy for decent pay. Gonna be a good week.

D

 

[Orangebird]

Hey doods!

It's funny...when I first started this business, everybody, including myself, instantly thought "real estate" would be the perfect market for these drone things. Years later I find it ironic that the residential real estate market is actually the worst market ever...with commercial real estate running a close second. Occasionally, I'll do a commercial real estate job if I've got nothing else going on, but I tell ya...those people kill me. I'm thinking about cutting that market out altogether.

Real estate agents are notoriously poor communicators (can take days to respond to email - and even then they only read the first 2 sentences if you're lucky). They want all the latest tech, but are completely technically inept. One days it's, "Can you deliver the photos digitally???" And the next day it's, "How do I use this Google Drive thing???" And then three days later, "Can you put those photos back on the cloud?" And then 6 days later it's, "Can you put those photos back on the cloud AGAIN???" I hate having to explain to clients that I'm not an archive vault for their media files. ARGH! All this for a lousy $150....that took 5 emails to collect...ugh.... I'm glad I don't count on this market for my drone revenue....though it DOES give me an opportunity to dust off the ol' Mavic Pro. So there's that.

On the menu for THIS week:

Saturday (Today): Construction progress video (Inspire 1)
Monday: Mapping (P4P)
Tuesday: Traffic analysis (P4P)
Wednesday: Traffic analysis (P4P)
Thursday: Traffic analysis (P4P)

NO real estate. All work I enjoy for decent pay. Gonna be a good week.

D

Traffic analysis sounds interesting. You doing that for a city?

 

[Donnie Frank]

Traffic analysis sounds interesting. You doing that for a city?

No. Ultimately, the traffic analysis is for new construction. I sub out for a traffic engineering firm. From what I gather, sometimes the final objective of my footage is to determine if there's enough traffic to warrant construction of a new business. And sometimes the objective is to determine if infrastructure can handle more traffic that might be generated by a new business. But my knowledge of what goes on "at the top" is cursory.

I'm not going to lie...it's not my favorite work, as it's kind of tedious. I basically park the drone in the sky for 4 minutes and do that every 11 minutes. So it's a 15 minute cycle. I put 10 seconds of leader at the front and back end of the video, so the actual length comes out to 4:20/video. I use my P4P, which has a higher bitrate than the Mavic Pro or Inspire 1. So the files are kind of large. I do this for 2 hours in the morning from essentially 7:AM - 9:AM and then again in the evening from 4PM - 6PM or 3AM - 6AM, depending on the job. I essentially charge $100/hour so, depending on the gig, it can be $400 or $500 / day, which isn't going to make me rich, but it's respectable.

They keep calling me back, so I can only assume that they've been happy with my work. I seem to have an instinct for what they want to see. It's not rocket surgery, but it's easy to second-guess yourself as to what a traffic engineer might want to see.

D

P.S. Is there any way to turn of these godforsaken emojis???? I LOATHE these things.

 

[Orangebird]

No. Ultimately, the traffic analysis is for new construction. I sub out for a traffic engineering firm. From what I gather, sometimes the final objective of my footage is to determine if there's enough traffic to warrant construction of a new business. And sometimes the objective is to determine if infrastructure can handle more traffic that might be generated by a new business. But my knowledge of what goes on "at the top" is cursory.

I'm not going to lie...it's not my favorite work, as it's kind of tedious. I basically park the drone in the sky for 4 minutes and do that every 11 minutes. So it's a 15 minute cycle. I put 10 seconds of leader at the front and back end of the video, so the actual length comes out to 4:20/video. I use my P4P, which has a higher bitrate than the Mavic Pro or Inspire 1. So the files are kind of large. I do this for 2 hours in the morning from essentially 7:AM - 9:AM and then again in the evening from 4PM - 6PM or 3AM - 6AM, depending on the job. I essentially charge $100/hour so, depending on the gig, it can be $400 or $500 / day, which isn't going to make me rich, but it's respectable.

They keep calling me back, so I can only assume that they've been happy with my work. I seem to have an instinct for what they want to see. It's not rocket surgery, but it's easy to second-guess yourself as to what a traffic engineer might want to see.

D

P.S. Is there any way to turn of these godforsaken emojis???? I LOATHE these things.

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Very interesting thanks for the information

 

[RMF808]

Congratulations and thank you for the info! I just got my 107 looking to put my investment to work haha. I got a few acres on the big island of Hawai’i and I wanted to map them for my permaculture farm to be built.

I shopped around for about 2 months and had to make the money also but eventually went with the Inspire 1v2. Power! You know what I’m talking about. I was really leaning towards a P4 with RTK but it just didn’t have the wind capability that I’m looking for. I go out on sailboats a lot also.

My first job was going to be real estate tomorrow and after about 20 emails it got cancelled. Funny that I just read your message at this point. Thanks again. A lot less effort will be going into this in the future.

Anyway, I’m curious about how you got into the construction aspect. I’ve flown around a bunch of cranes and gotten shots of construction sites. I really like it and would like to do more but my first attempt was emailing a few local architect firms. No response, no surprise. Any words of wisdom for me? Let me know if you ever make it out to Hawai’i, aloha.