We got done flying the Inspire, it was about a 13 minute flight. And the man that was there that was in charge of the operation said that it takes his two man survey team with Trimble sticks. It takes them eight hours to do we did in 13 minutes. When you see ROI like that, instantly, people see that value, and they don't mind hiring the drones to come and do the business.
Remote Piloted aerial vehicles are changing the way many industries are doing business. Drones, big and small, are going places that people never used to be able to go, or at least not get to that easily. Welcome to random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today we're learning about the rapidly expanding uses of drones. And to do that, we'll be speaking with a professional drone pilot.
My name is Jeff Keller, I am a commercial drone pilot here in central Illinois. I've been a part 107 pilot for the past two years. And prior to that I was a 333 pilot. And what that means is the only way you're able to fly a drone prior to 107 was if you were a real manned aircraft pilot, my company located just about 25 miles north of Bloomington on i 39. And we fly a multitude of different things with a lot of different angles.
Well, that raises a question, are there certain regulations and rules that come into place when people are using a drone for commercial purposes,
There absolutely are as a commercial pilot, you're allowed to fly one aircraft at a time period, you have to have your FAA part 107. UAS certificate with you at all times. And or since maybe you've had it for two years, you have to take the I Cara, the new test. And if you're a manned pilot, then you have to be current and have flown in the last night or have your current biennial done. If not, then you have to take your recurrent test. And that's a 40 question test. And what that means is you're just not flying for fun, you're flying for payment, and payment could be in any way shape or form. It could be for money. It could be for tickets to the game. It could be for a limo ride, you know, night out on the town, it could be any type of payment. That's the difference between a hobbyist and a commercial pilot.
So what's involved in taking this test? What are some of the things you need to know to have that permission?
It's different from your first test versus your recurrent test. The first test covers a multitude of things, whether your FAA sectional charts and payloads and flying safely. And the five different types of people that you're going to come in contact with or possibly come in contact with. That's quite a few of them right there off the top of my head.
That's a lot of stuff right there. Did you start flying drones? As a hobbyist? Did you want to get into it commercially? You had experience flying manned aircraft right before that. So what did you first dip your toe into in the world of drones?
It's actually quite comical. I received a call from HR. And I received a call from a an engineer, a lead engineer. They had these $50,000 drones, but they didn't have a pilot. So when they found out about me, they said, Jeff, come and fly our drones. We need a pilot. So it was an awesome situation for me. I was like, Yeah, I know this stuff, I can find out this stuff. So at that time, they had their 333 approval to fly these drones. They just didn't have a pilot to fly them. So it was the best case scenario for me.
You mentioned a $50,000. Drone, does it take a lot more to learn how to drive a drive fly and $50,000 drone than it does with a drone that you could maybe pick up as a hobbyist.
Yeah, this particular aircraft we actually launched off of a 12 foot launcher, the aircraft flew 50 miles an hour for 50 minutes at 400 feet above the ground. What I can tell you is yes, it wasn't like a DJI. You could go to Best Buy or go to the local hobby shop or get on Amazon and buy a drone. And the day you get it you charge the battery up and go fly in for fun or as commercial. This aircraft was fully autonomous from the time it launches. To the time it lands. You basically had no control over it. The only control you had was if there wasn't a situation where a helicopter came in, maybe come into a hospital or something or a military aircraft came flying through your airspace, you had to down the aircraft. And when you did that, that airplane literally started spinning the propeller backwards and went straight down into the ground.
What is the operation of the drone like that? Like, what are you seeing what are you controlling? How do you know what's in your airspace?
It takes hours of preparation prior to going to that site I can think of a site we went to it was a huge limestone mine out in Ohio, and you do all of the FAA background checks, you look for airspace, you're doing all that pre flight before you get there. Then after you get there, you're assessing to make sure what Google Maps was showing you that was five or 10 years old is still true. Because when you pick that landing zone, and the way you land into the wind, you have to make sure everything is prepared before you take off. Because after you take off, again, you could change some things a little bit, but not very much. So what you're seeing is, you're actually watching the aircraft, there's a starting point, there's an ending point, and it just looks like a lawnmower in the sky. It's just flying back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. If the wind is coming out of the west, you're flying north and south because you want a nice crosswind, you don't want a headwind and a tailwind keeps the aircraft going the same speed that had a Sony a force sensor on board. So it was taking like 20 or 40. I don't remember now that was three years ago, it's taking very high megapixel high quality pictures. And once we got it back on the ground, we would take all of those pictures off of the memory stick. And then that's where the magic began. You start stitching all those pictures together, we shot ground control points at different locations at that mine. So we were able to correlate all that data and have almost perfect calculations, giving stockpile analysis and how the width of their haul roads down into the mind. And the the sides of the mind if there was anything unsafe, all the software would give you all that information.
When you have a larger vehicle like that remote pilot vehicle, do you have to file a flight plan like you would with a small airplane? Or is it different? Because you're not in the same kind of airspace?
No, no flight plans to file in fact, that day that we were flying, we were I think 100 miles from any airport. So we didn't expect to see anything or anybody. The one fear we had was just wondering what other type of interference we might have. Were there big radio towers going through their big power lines, or it seemed like every time we went to fly, it was a new adventure, something always crept up on us.
So what have you found are the kinds of things that you don't think about going into the industry? What are the things people might be very enthusiastic, for instance, to just use the drones for aerial photography, but they might not necessarily know what the ins and outs of getting the shots that they want might be? Is it all the equipment and then once you kind of learn to fly the thing and get a feel for it, it comes naturally are there certain things that you have to have a learning curve to develop,
I think there's a lot of learning to go along with it, you definitely have to have a mind for the shot that you're want to get. So a couple of weeks ago, I was flying down south to Bloomington near funks Grove, there was a wedding out there. And it was 93 degrees. That was about five o'clock in the evening, the sun was low in the sky. The shadows were like 10 feet tall, and the people were two feet tall. It's crazy. You don't think about that, you know, you're like, Oh, it's a beautiful day, I'm going to go fly I'm so lucky that's not raining. And it's not snowing, and there's not 500 mile an hour winds. But then the shadows, you know, we're so big, there's lots of things, you can have your sensor on board set to automatic and hope for the best. Or if you really get deep into into you know about apertures and F stop settings, you can actually change those settings and really get some trick photography then like if you're doing waterfalls or you know something else like that.
So really are drones kind of like cameras in the fact that if you spend a little bit of money, you can get this type of quality and then you put a little bit more money into it know how to use it, you get a higher and higher
quality. Absolutely, absolutely. DJI just came out recently with the Mavic. Two. And they have two different sensors on board that you can choose from. One of them has a zooming capability, which is a bit unusual. Um, they do have it on another camera as well. And the other one is got a Hasselblad camera onboard. And that's giving you an extremely high 20 or more megapixel. So you're getting extremely high quality photos from those sensors.
So tell me a little bit about if you can describe some of the favorite shots that you've been able to capture with drone photography.
Wow, that's a loaded question. I think. I think one of the funnest ones is I had a big wedding party, and there must have been 40 people there. And it was really fun because I told them all to act like they're having a good time and start waving at the camera. And they did and I was down about 10 feet away from them in front of them. And I actually started flying the aircraft away from them and up to give them a really cool Crazy, it was not only a neat picture, but that the video afterwards of going away from the crowd, and they were all waving, that was a lot of fun. It
really kind of combines the idea of film camera work with a dolly and all of those sorts of things in a way that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of a drone being able to do. So when you're doing a shot like that. Is that a line of sight control that you're doing with those drones? Do you have a ability to see beyond just line of sight with the actual aircraft? Yeah,
the beyond visual line of sight is something that's new that you have to get a waiver for. So I when I fly, I usually tried to set myself if I'm flying, like if I'm out in the field, I'm flying an 80 acre parcel, I'll try to set myself at the 50 yard line, if you will, right, right in between that 80 acres, I'll put myself halfway. That way. When the aircraft is flying left and right, it's out about 2500 to 3000 feet, I can see that just fine. It gets out to 3500 feet that's getting beyond visual line of sight. And that's going to be different for each individual. I have a trained eye, I've been flying for over three years. So I can see those aircraft when they're out there. And I know they're going to turn I can look down, I've got it on my iPad or fully autonomous remote control, I can see where the aircraft is and know that it's turning in, it's on its way back. And sure enough, literally within 20 to 30 seconds, it's right back in front of me heading, you know, from right to left, and then left to right, coming back the other direction. Other than you
mentioned agriculture applications, and of course, the applications for people to get aerial photographs or events. What other applications have you been hired to use a drone for other than that first example that you gave me,
right? Kind of interesting. We actually did a search and rescue effort. And if anybody wants to go out and Google this, it was in Amboy, California, and there was a missing couple. They were coming from the Midwest or from the East Coast out to Palm Springs, California. And they stopped in Amboy. To look at this old crater, this 1500 foot tall volcano crater dormant for 1000s and 1000s of years. But we were called in to fly this area's 128 degrees Fahrenheit, it was miserable. The aircraft were overheating, we had to fly them for 10 or 15 minutes capture as much data as we could, and then bring them back and put them in air conditioned vehicles to get them to cool down, change batteries and go flying again. So we were looking, it took us three days to find the husband, of course, he was deceased. No one's gonna live at 128 degrees Fahrenheit. And then we never did find the wife. We searched for two and a half weeks with the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department with local law enforcement. And with five aircraft. It's a very interesting ride up. But I was part of that. That was interesting. Over north of Peoria, there was a communications tower that was hit by lightning. So I on my way home one day I took my DJI Inspire aircraft fluid up 300 feet, took aerial shots all the way around of all of the antennas, and gave it to the guys. And they appreciated it because the guy that normally climbs the tower for $400 wasn't available for two weeks. So they were happy that I did it that same day, on my way home from work. roof inspections have been unlimited. I mean, we have got lots of big insurance companies here in town, and Central Illinois, and nationwide. So the Hurricanes are hitting the East Coast, hail damage, as far as roof inspections, that could be someone who's trying to they just want to get insured by a new company. So that company just wants to make sure there isn't anything wrong with that big, it could be an industrial park, or it could be just a regular house. So we've been doing lots of roof inspections. And also something interesting is pavement projects. I know that sounds crazy. But we fly that same area just like that lawnmower in the sky that I'm speaking of. And then we do shots on the ground. And you can actually calculate how much material they're going to need to fix cracks and holes and potholes and in anything else, and then how much asphalt they're going to need for a 234 or 500 acre parking lot.
And you can cover ground a lot quicker, I would imagine. It's enough to do it.
It's unbelievable. In fact, it's funny you say that because we were told once this was three years ago, we got done flying the Inspire. It was about a 13 minute flight. And the man that was there that was in charge of the operation said that it takes his men to man survey team with Trimble sticks. It takes them eight hours to do we did in 13 minutes. So when you can see ROI like that, instantly, people see that value, and they don't mind hiring the drones to come and do the business.
Now. Are you finding that this stage of the business? How much competition do you face? Billy, are there a lot of drone pilots out there a lot of people that have these facilities? Is that something that you're still kind of unique in the marketplace?
That's kind of a trick question. The challenge today is if The people that are hiring the drone operator, if they want to pay $25 and get their next door neighbor to go fly they are if they want to be illegal and get a commercial pilot with a million dollar insurance plan, and a high end drone and a license and not have all those troubles that come along with that. That's the challenge. Lots of people are undercutting other individuals, and they don't have all of the credentials or the insurances that they should have. But on the upside of that, there's a lot of companies nationwide that are hiring commercial pilots all over the place that have lots of credentials.
Now Jeff, thanks so much for coming in and talking to us today.
My pleasure.
Jeff Keller is a professional drone pilot and has been a speaker at the drones in the heartland conference held each fall on the campus of Heartland Community College. Thanks for listening to random acts of knowledge. Please check out our other episodes on iTunes I Heart Radio audio boom or subscribe
